


Flare-ups

by legendarytobes



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Fic, Angst, Deckerstar - Freeform, Devil Face (Lucifer TV), F/M, devil bod, devil issues, five things fic, post-season four
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 20:04:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21258881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legendarytobes/pseuds/legendarytobes
Summary: After being gone three years in Hell, coming back home is more complicated than Lucifer anticipated, and requires more adjustments even with the Detective than he'd hoped for.





	1. Desire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arlome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arlome/gifts).

> For The Deckerstar Network "Bat out of Hell" Halloween Challenge. 
> 
> This is for Arlome and had the prompts of:
> 
> 1) "It's not hemorrhoids, Detective" (Lucifer 4.10)  
AND  
2) A dribbling candle

  1. **Desire**

He’d been easing himself back into the regular rhythm of life back on earth for over a month. It was odd. All of it odd. He’d left earth before, of course. More often than not within a few days---maybe a month if he were lucky---his brother would find him, subdue him, and drag him back to Hell. He’d missed everything from 1978 to 2011; decades and to have missed a lot of glam rock in the early ‘80s felt like a crime anyway. There had been whole centuries he’d never bothered to go topside to witness. Honestly, the Dark Ages hadn’t interested him much, had felt as much like Hell on Earth as one could get, and he’d no interest in watching humans suffer and die from plague. So, in the grand scheme of things, the fact he’d been gone three years shouldn’t mean as much as it did.

Not really.

Yes, it meant that the infant nephew he’d left behind was three and toddling about. Alright, it also meant that Trixie was almost through eighth grade and an actual teenager. It did mean that in his absence Eve had “found herself” (whatever that entailed) and settled down with Maze, well, as much as a demon and the original party girl could settle down whilst maintaining a bustling bounty hunting business out of Los Angeles, which included being on the road half the time. It meant the Detective had a few more lines near the corners of her eyes and a streak of grey she’d refused to color---one he’d probably put there himself with how much she had to have worried about him down in Hell. And, alright, maybe it even meant that after what had felt like _to him_ centuries in Hell, he was a bit rusty with everything on earth again.

Like eliciting desire.

He hadn’t tried in the month he’d been back to get a confession from a suspect that way. It hadn’t been necessary in the docket of cases he and the Detective had worked on so far, but this was an upper level mob flunky, one high enough in the family to know things that could help bigger cases in Vice and in Homicide but also a bloke not dumb enough to get himself shivved by squealing either. It would take more of a touch than the Detective and the Douche’s good cop/bad cop routine could elicit.

He’d stood at the two-way mirror, watching the detectives go as hard as they could on Moretti, and it had become clear long before the Detective excused herself to knock on the door that she’d needed back up. Bloody hell, as much as the Douche detested him---and his prolonged absence from earth had _not_ made that particular heart grow fonder---even Daniel had started taking meaningful glances back to the glass and hinting that a different tact was needed.

When the Detective finally called for him, she slipped through the door, shut, and then _locked_ it quickly behind her. So, it would be one of those talks, wouldn’t it? The kind he’d been skating around having with her since he’d returned to her. That trick due in no small part to Duma and Remiel (of all beings and he figured his bitch of a younger sister was bored looking for something to actually hunt) agreeing to split looking after Hell for him, at least until he’d grown bored of earth. Remy still figured he’d give up on the Detective, but she’d never thought much of him anyway. Fair enough. He had the same resentment toward her. She reminded him of all of the worst of Amenadiel’s former qualities, especially the arrogance, but she lacked anything to redeem herself. No softer qualities for the Angel of the Hunt. But if she wanted to harass and scare demons in Hell for six months at a go, more power to her.

He certainly didn’t.

He’d had far too much of it of late, and it had all been the kind of hard scrabble and carnage that he and Mazikeen had born early in his tenure in Hell. There was no easy rhythm to be had there for the first few centuries of his return, not when the punishment came first for Dromos and any demon fool enough to side with him. Then there had been the upstarts who stilled sensed weakness in their King. Something that could not be ignored either, not unless more threatened their way upwards and to his family or worse. So, no, even if the final stretch (A year on earth? Six months? Who knew?) had been easier, relatively speaking, Lucifer’s final stint in Hell had been as bloodthirsty and cruel a reign as he’d ever held.

A level of brutality he’d not relinquished himself to in eons.

He did _not_ want to explain that to the Detective ever. Unburdening that to her wouldn’t help him.

He didn’t even want to with Linda, and he was running out of excuses to be avoid sessions with her now that he’d gotten Lux up and running to his liking again and had eased back into his consultant routine.

What he’d done…Mazikeen would understand. Oddly, so would Amenadiel, since Heaven’s fiercest warrior knew exactly how vile demons could be, would also understand they only responded to violence and pain. But humans would not, _could_ not, and Lucifer refused to open that side of himself to them, lest the Detective and his surprise sister-in-law finally turn from him.

So, he was not happy to have the door locked behind them and that measured look in the Detective’s blue eyes. Oh no. She was evaluating him, and he was afraid she’d find him lacking.

“Dan thinks we could use help.”

“You must think it too, or you wouldn’t have slipped in. The Douche is not renowned for his strategies and plans.”

She frowned. “You two don’t have to fight about everything.”

“I would offer an entire olive grove to him, but even with therapy, he seems to permanently blame me for Charlotte’s death.” Lucifer sighed and scrubbed at his chin. “I can’t say I completely disagree. So much with her I should have handled better, but even I had no idea what Cain was truly capable of or that Amenadiel would go to the only D.A. he knew to help in gathering proof. I could have…” he sighed and shook his head. “Perhaps not the best way to focus when a suspect needs cajoling.”

The Detective’s frown deepened, marring her usually lovely features. “If you’re not feeling up to it, we can just do the way we used to.”  


“The frustrating way where he lawyers-up and then walks home a free man inside of three hours?”

“I just…” she wrung her hands a bit. “You’ve been gone a while and the last time you did this wasn’t exactly on purpose.”

“You mean you’re agonizing over whether I’ll create an army of desire-zombies just waiting to confess to me all over the station?” Lucifer’s tone was more clipped than he’d intended, and his joke fell incredibly flat.

The Detective flinched and couldn’t quite meet his gaze. “I didn’t say that.”

He shrugged. “You didn’t deny it either.” Lucifer sighed and straightened his onyx ring. “I’m fine, Detective. Desire is my jam, and it’s assuredly something I haven’t been able to do in quite a while. Desire, of course, is a moot point in Hell.”

She took a step forward and stopped herself from speaking again, snapping her mouth shut almost as quickly as she’d opened it. After a few breaths, the Detective tried again. “We need to talk about that later.”

“Later is assuredly the best time for it,” Lucifer replied. “You want Moretti confessing readily, and, honestly, there’s a bachelor party at Lux I need to oversee anyway. May we, Detective?”

She nodded and stepped aside so he could do as requested, the trick he had to offer the department, although it was anything but. “If anything…”

“It will be fine. Do you want to watch or is it just the Douche you’d like to have taking notes on this?”

The Detective frowned but followed him into the interrogation room. She stayed standing, leaning against the back wall between him and Daniel, observing everything quietly. He knew that she’d want to be in here for this, not just because her job would be easier witnessing it all firsthand but because she was the immune one. Should things go pear shaped, she’d at least be able to keep a level head around him.

Not that it would.

He wasn’t _that_ out of practice.

Letting out a long breath, Lucifer sat down at the table and forced himself to embrace all his usual bravado. There was no need for the Douche to know how nervous he was, and it wouldn’t help them with the suspect either.

He grinned, the one he reserved for criminals and demons, the one that clearly broadcast to any idiot smart enough to figure it out that he was the wolf in their midst. Most criminals got the hint and became uneasy. Some, like this Moretti chap, were dumb enough to think they were even bigger and badder than he was. Mistake that. Outside of dear old Dad and, perhaps, his pillock of a twin brother, _nothing_ was more powerful than he was. It was like a human and an ant, and that was being generous.

“So, Mr. Moretti was it? I’m the consultant and---”

“I don’t have anything to say. Even if I worked for the Corellis---and I don’t---I wouldn’t talk to a consultant anymore than I’d talk to some cop.”

Lucifer nodded and lowered his voice into a low purr. “I suppose most consultants you wouldn’t, but I only have the one question, and I’m not here to read body language or wire you up like a Christmas tree for a bloody polygraph.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I just want to know, Mr. Moretti, what is it you truly desire?”

As hundreds of people had before him, Moretti’s jaw went slack and his pupils blew wide. He blinked back at Lucifer and after an initial moment of confusion, the words tumbled from the man’s lips: “I want to be the head of the Family. Dominic Corelli fell into it when the old man died, and he’s shit at it. I’m sick of cleaning up his messes. I’m not just a hitman. I was Francesco’s consiglieri and now I’m a freaking errand boy and cleaner.” Moretti stopped and blinked back at him, the Detective, and Daniel.

The Detective nodded. “So, you admit to killing Nathan Parsons?”

“I…it was orders. I have to do what the boss wants, even if I thought it was a dumb move. Too much heat. Like I said, if I were in charge, things would run cleaner.” He frowned and glared directly at Lucifer. “What did you do? Did you lace my water?”

He shrugged and couldn’t help the smirk from spreading. _See nothing to worry about at all. _“What I tend to do best. I suppose you’ll be wanting that lawyer now?”

“You tricked me.”

Lucifer stood and straightened his lapels. “I most certainly did not.”

He passed through the doors and back toward the snack room. Lucifer wasn’t actually hungry---he’d never technically needed food to start with and found himself turned off by most things these days, probably the sight of too much viscera of late---but there was probably some pudding he could steal and that _never_ got old. When he’d left, he’d been aware of the Detective reminding Moretti of his Miranda rights and then helping him work out the logistics of his phone call to his representation.

He didn’t get far into the snack room before the Douche followed him in. Lucifer sighed. “You know, I was only planning a kip from one of the puddings. To be fair to me, which you rarely are, Miss Lopez steals them too.”

Lucifer turned around fully and expected Daniel to go into a tear on him. The other man had given him an ear full his first day back, especially about just disappearing for three years and how dare he. Since the Detective had broken that row up, Lucifer expected that Daniel had been spoiling for another go ever since. What he had not expected was the same slack-jawed and wide-eyed look on the Douche that had formerly graced Moretti’s face.

_Shit_.

He swallowed and waved a hand in front of the other man’s eyes. “Douc…Daniel…Detective Espinoza. Can you hear me?”

“I want to tell you something.”

“You really don’t have to trouble yourself. If you take a few deep breaths…” _Or perhaps if I do_. “you should be feeling completely normal in a few moments.”

Daniel inched closer and his whole demeanor was off. It reminded Lucifer uncomfortably of the time with his sister Azrael’s blade and how utterly possessed Daniel was by it then. “You want to know what I desire, right?”

Lucifer took in several deep breaths and tried to concentrate, tried to figure out how to tamp his own ability down. It never had felt like much before. Just something he could call on, frankly, at first in bed or frivolously to get out of traffic tickets. Then it had been useful for work. He’d always had to stare at his intended targets before. He’d never had to worry about a spreading radius. Never once until that night in Lux had he ever worried about what happened if he _couldn’t_ turn it off.

Nothing felt different, and Daniel was still eying him, his look addled. “Do you know what I want?”

“World peace? A puppy? Perhaps a favorite childhood sled with a terribly misleading name?” Lucifer joked, even as the anxiety lanced through him. If it had only affected Dan and at least that was something, but anyone who’d been in that interrogation room and wasn’t a miracle would have been scrambled just the same.

Not what he’d intended in the slightest.

“No,” Daniel said, getting closer. “I want to sleep through the night.”

“Beg your pardon?” Lucifer replied, more confused than he’d wanted to admit. That was distinctly not what he thought the Douche would say. “Why can’t you now? Is it still Charlotte after all this time?”

Daniel’s pupils were still wide. “In a way. I think about her, about what she said about Hell and the nightmares and loops she was caught in. I…I’ve done things…truly awful things, and I can’t sleep at night when I think about them.”

Lucifer frowned. This was news to him. Granted, he knew about Palmetto---the whole department did---but, honestly, putting Malcolm in a coma to protect the Detective sounded like a bonus to Lucifer. The bastard had ended up where he deserved finally, after all, and, like Cain, Malcolm had been an inmate that Lucifer had lavished attention on often whilst in Hell this time round. Alright, so Daniel had also been on the take apparently or at least looked the other way whilst Malcolm had been. He figured there’d been a few times with leads that came too easily that might have been the other man cutting corners.

But they were talking about the Douche for Dad’s sakes; how much sinning could the other man really have done?

“What are you on about, Daniel?”

But his power was dimming, and the Douche had already confessed, at least as much as Lucifer was likely to get from him. The other man just blinked, focus coming back to his eyes, as he regarded Lucifer warily. “I…when did we go get a snack break?”

Lucifer filed that away too. First time he’d had a person he’d sought desires from lose time on him. That was not reassuring. “Moretti’s already called his lawyers after confessing to the murder of Parsons. The Detective is working up the paperwork, and I was a bit peckish. I assumed you were the same or bogarting the pudding, which is a bit rude if you asked me.”  


“You’re probably a millionaire.”

Lucifer shrugged. “I still like the pudding you bring, worth snatching it.”

“You really are an asshole, man. Anyone ever tell you that?”

Lucifer rolled his eyes and reached into the fridge for one of the chocolate snacks. Daniel deserved it for never getting off his grudges. “I have one or two little birdies around the precinct pecking me to death on that. Wonder who could they be?”

“Ugh, whatever. Seriously, man, start bringing your own. I’m not a handout, and we’re not friends.”

“Yes, you’ve made that quite clear. Crystal even,” Lucifer replied, grabbing a spare spoon and digging into the pudding with feigned excitement. It was childish, but it gave him some equilibrium to annoy Daniel. It was what he’d always done, wonky powers or not aside. “I don’t know why sometimes. I understand about Charlotte, almost, even if I didn’t do it.”

“You lied to us and didn’t fucking help, Lucifer.”

“I tried to explain to the Detective more than once.”

“With crazy metaphors, and I don’t know why any of us humored you as long as we did. Then you just appear back here after dropping out to nowhere for years, and we’re supposed to pretend it’s what? 2018 all over again? Do you know how upset Chloe even was? Do you know that Trixie cried over it too? Do you even care they couldn’t even call you or email?”

“Believe me,” Lucifer replied, swallowing hard. “I missed them every day. The Detective and the urchin most of all. I couldn’t because of business for my father.”

“Yeah, you and Amenadiel on those errands. Where is it your dad lives that doesn’t even have the internet or cell towers?” He shrugged. “Either it’s convenient or you both escaped mostly from some weird-ass cult.”

“Well, my father does like to think of himself as all powerful,” Lucifer conceded. “I…if there had been any other way, Daniel, believe me. I would not have left.”

“And then when I pick up the pieces, which I do every damn time, you can slide in and act like the wounded party because I’m the one person who doesn’t fall for your bullshit.”

Lucifer wanted to point out that the acting lieutenant hadn’t been thrilled to see him, but she’d been someone he’d been able to convince with a favor called in much like Olivia before her. It was often easy to get higher ups to listen if you could fast track their promotions. He also hadn’t mentioned that Miss Lopez whilst friendly enough in groups, had been stand-offish with him as well, clearly also smarting from his abrupt departure.

His return to Hell hadn’t endeared him to people beyond Daniel either.

“I’m sorry. I…one would think that a cop would understand duty and obligation. What my father essentially needed was about both.” He finished the pudding and shoved it into the rubbish bin. “I owe you no explanations.”

“Eventually, though, you owe a huge one to Trixie. I don’t know what bullshit you spun for Chloe, but I have absolutely no doubt you’ll take off again, and I’ll pick it up all over again. Fallout from Charlotte, fallout from the first time you left us in the lurch. It’s not fun being the one to clean up messes.”

Lucifer turned to leave the break room and gave Daniel a brisk nod. “Believe it or not, Daniel, I know exactly what cleaning up someone else’s messes is like. Intimately acquainted these last few years in fact.”

“You sure don’t act like it.”

He shrugged and thought of the words the Douche had uttered in his trance. “Then, we don’t know each other as well as we thought we did.”

**

Trixie was over at a friend’s birthday party, and that should have led to more time to enjoy the Detective’s apartment, to take advantage of the fact that they had some free time for the weekend together. But he wasn’t feeling it. Whilst they were an item now that he was back, and he knew he loved her deeply and had had her say it to him before he’d even left Los Angeles years ago, starting back up from nothing was hard. They’d made out, of course. Lucifer wasn’t a schoolgirl listening to Adele, nor was he chaste. Hardly that, but he wasn’t…_they_ weren’t ready for all of it. Not after years---centuries for him---apart and so much rebuilding left to do between them. However, if things hadn’t gotten buggered up with Daniel earlier today, he’d at least have been in an amorous mood.

The Detective eyed him even as she leaned against him on the couch. His mind had wandered, and Lucifer couldn’t even remember which movie they were ostensibly chilling over. He clearly didn’t care.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?”

“I saw…Dan followed you out really fast. I know that shuffle, Lucifer. It was like the guests at Lux that night at the masquerade.”

He sighed and stroked her hair, ignoring that one strand of grey she hadn’t covered but clearly had to come from all the stress the last few years had inflicted on her. From the pain his messed-up life and duties had inflicted on her. “Perhaps it was somewhat mis-calibrated.”

“Flareups of your powers?”

Lucifer rolled his eyes. “I keep telling you that devilish things…the infernal isn’t hemorrhoids. The problems with the so-called prophecy are long past and, even if they weren’t, heaven’s most annoying and aggressive angel is watching Hell for the next six months. It’s safe as houses.”

“Yeah, but you clearly didn’t mean to make Dan tell you want he truly wants either.”

“Overhear that did you?”

“No, but I could tell enough to figure what would happen when he got you alone in the snack room.” She frowned again. “And, no, we might be friends and good co-parents, but I don’t have a right anymore to know too much about him, to pry on things he’d rather keep secret. It’s just not my place. It wouldn’t be even if we were still married. I just…you might have more range than you mean to now.”

“But the entire precinct remained intact outside of one room, so it’s a blip.”

She resettled herself on the couch and angled her body to look up into his eyes. “Do you really mean that? It’s okay if there’s…you just figured out what you could do when you left.”  


“You mean be fully devilish. Clearly, a trick of my own subconscious and self-hatred. “I’m better now.”

“I mean, yes, you didn’t accidentally use it with tracking down Dromos, but you had to draw on it to keep the demons controlled at the Mayan. I’m sure you did the same in Hell. I’m not dumb.”  


He laughed genuinely at that. No one would ever accuse his detective of being a fool. It was one of the first things that had caught his interest---her notable instincts and sharp mind. “No, but it’s---the devil side---it’s not a problem.”

She sighed and kissed him, the minx. When she pulled back, she still eyed him, blue eyes impossibly wide. “Did you have to use it a lot down there?”

“I don’t wish to talk about Hell. There’s no point in it, Chloe. It’s not a fun place. It’s explicitly designed to be the worst of places---both for me and the human souls trapped there. Like I told you back at _The Cabin_. It was a job. That was all it ever was. I did it again, spent less time down there than I usually tend to before my next spate of time on earth. Now, with Duma and Remiel shift-splitting, I don’t have to go back and fully intend not to.”

Being the master of circumlocution that he was, he’d spoken around her question. Again, not an actual lie. Because of course he’d had to rely on that side of himself. The demons hadn’t respected him, had shown so much such disdain to disobey one of his most important orders. They hadn’t found Lucifer, the Lightbringer (or what was left of him), terrifying enough. They’d answer to the Devil. So that was what Lucifer had done. Had let himself become far too often over the centuries.

But he certainly didn’t want to speak of it.

“It’s okay if you did, you know.” The Detective continued. Reaching up, she stroked his face. “It would be okay if you did…we didn’t have much time to work through all the things you can do to your body, how deep all the angel self-flagellation and guilt and crap goes. If you’re having issues…”

“I’m not. I just learned more about Daniel than I cared to. I…not to break confidences, though I’m hardly a priest or anything requiring such confidentiality, but he’s not sleeping well. I don’t know if there’s anything you and the urchin can do to help with that, but I did think you should know. It’s what he wanted: rest.”

“Well, the department has been short-staffed lately. He’s seemed better after working with Linda, and he tried dating a bit this last year. No one really stuck, but, yeah, maybe Trixie can work on him a bit. I don’t want to put pressure on her, but sometimes he perks up after an extra weekend with her, you know?”

“Yes, well, I’ve found the urchin quite tolerable…if one must deal with offspring at all.”

The Detective laughed a little and burrowed into his side. “I thought you’d protect ‘the urchin’ with your life.”

“I would. It doesn’t mean that I like children. She was better than most small parasites. I do enjoy the ones who drive hard bargains and make bullies regret their actions. Can’t fault a child with decent knife skills either.”

“One day, I’m going to kill Maze.”

“I think it’s smart. L.A. is hardly a safe city or else neither of us would solve murders weekly.”

“Yeah, still…”

“But I shall never actually enjoy children. They’re annoying little burdens that take all of one’s time and money and are quite sticky. I’m excited for the spawn as she gets older, almost like an actual adult. Believe me, I plan to be a bad influence uncle for Charlie when it’s time.”

“But not for Trixie, or I’ll kill you.”

“Well, I can’t promise that in about fifteen years when I take Charlie to his first strip club that I won’t invite Beatrice too as an equal opportunity.”

“Lucifer!”

“Oh, Linda knows I am ill-prepared for toddlers or children. Give me a teenager to introduce to the finer points of rolling a joint. I’m the Devil after all.”

“Trixie’s not doing drugs.”

“Well, not with an attitude like that she won’t.”

“No drugs, strip clubs, car driving or driving lessons for at least three more years and, frankly, I’m going to come back with air-tight and well-worded ‘don’t’ list for both kids. You can’t corrupt your own family.”

“I can try,” he replied, chuckling. Then, glad she’d been distracted by his tangent, leaned down to kiss her.

They’d deal with his enhanced desire mojo later, make sure that she and he were the only ones in the interview room. Something as a stop gap. Because he wasn’t having flare-ups. He wasn’t. Being _that_ was behind him. It was for Hell and the demons who deserved his wrath. The Devil side wasn’t for here---for Chloe---not ever again.


	2. Beneath the Skin

  1. **Beneath the Skin**

“And that’s what I have on the Ruiz murder. We have what looks like someone with semi-professional skills. They chopped the body up efficiently and used enough lye to make identifying Angelica take a few extra weeks than it should have. I don’t know if it was a hit or if someone in her life was super into the forensics channel or what, but a lot of thought was put into the body disposal.”

Ella finished but her tone wasn’t the one Lucifer was used to. Whilst at crime scenes, she made the occasional joke about the murder M.O. and seemed as cheery as ever with the large CSI and officer teams, when forensics chats at her lab involved him and the Detective and no one else, the bouncy tech lost all of her energy. It reminded him of the week or so after the fake Sinnerman had been killed. He’d been fairly busy then trying to assimilate the knowledge that Cain had tracked him down and, even moreso, trying to figure out how to kill the world’s first murderer to spite his father, but even Lucifer had noticed Ella then.

There was something apocalyptically wrong when she only talked in monotone answers and gave no hugs or smiles. Not that Lucifer had been a massive fan of hugs, even if Beatrice and Ella both seemed, ahem, Hell bent on doling them out. But, still, the Ella he saw now when it was mostly just him and her or him, her, and the Detective was nothing like the one he’d known. Miss Lopez wasn’t exactly cold. She could never be that, but she was aloof and guarded in a way that tore into him.

The Detective nodded as Ella finished her report. “I can start entering what you have in the reports, and then I’ll contact some of the hardware stores near where the body was found. Maybe someone bought large and suspicious amounts of lye before the murder. If this is that meticulous, I doubt our unsub was careless enough to have to buy it after the fact.”

Ella nodded. “I think so.”

The Detective started to the door. “You want to help with the paperwork?”

Lucifer smirked. “Do I ever?”

“You would think that maybe coming back you’d like to try new things to expand your horizons, Lucifer.”

“But paperwork isn’t expanding any horizons. I do it for Lux when I have to. I am quite versed in it. Bureaucracy rarely changes. It is one of the most constant evils humans ever created, and they say I’m the Devil.” He winked at the Detective who merely groaned and turned to do the same with Miss Lopez. However, she’d already turned back to her work.

“You could always raid the vending machines for us then,” the Detective replied.

“I…give us a minute,” Lucifer answered. “I’ve a question for Miss Lopez.”

The Detective frowned, but she also seemed to decide against constantly molly coddling him. He’d been back for almost two months, and outside of Daniel---and that ship had sunk long ago---Miss Lopez was the only person at the precinct he needed to find his footing with again. That would have to be settled one way or another if only to make their work as functional and efficient as possible.

“Alright, but before you come by my desk---grab me a tuna from the vending machine.”

“I will not. You’ll catch your death of food poisoning, Detective.”

She chuckled on her way out. “I think you’ll find that lately I like to live dangerously.”  


He waved his hand, dismissing such a thought. “There’s living dangerously and living stupidly. Don’t do the latter.”

“Tuna on rye, Lucifer,” she replied before heading out the door fully and to her desk.

Lucifer turned and settled himself on a stool. “Miss Lopez, it strikes me that just trying to ease back into our routine from before isn’t working as well as I’d have hoped.”  


“No, we’re fine,” she said, her voice as inflectionless as he’d ever heard it.

Clearly, they were anything _but_ fine.

He sighed and drummed long fingers against the cold metal of her exam table. “You’re angry with me. If you’ve a quarrel with my business travels, I would understand. I would very much like to clear the air between us.”  


She turned and glared at him, removing her goggles as she spoke. “Luce…ifer, I just…it’s easier not to talk about this.”

“Is it though?”

She started to pace in her corner of the lab. “What do you want me to say? That you just disappeared from _everything_ for three years, and didn’t even say goodbye? I mean, do you know how much that hurt, you jerk? Yeah, Chloe was a total wreck. I don’t think that girl slept for six months. Tribe nights sucked, and Maze…holy crap was she pissed you didn’t take her with you.”

“I’m well aware.”

They’d had quite the row when he’d returned to Los Angeles. It wasn’t as much that Mazikeen would have left this time, not with Charlie and Linda and Trixie all to protect. No, it was more that she’d been deeply hurt and offended he hadn’t even considered asking her. The fisticuffs and, alright, a bit of her blades had led them at least to a better reconciliation. Any time Lucifer even thought about leaving this plane, he was going to ask Mazikeen if she’d like to come with him as a matter of course.

After eons thinking of her as more of a servant than an equal, Lucifer still struggled to remember he’d granted his wayward demon her autonomy. He was still trying to honor that consideration, and hoped it was going better.

He seemed to have quite the talent for fucking things up and not in the good way.

_Everything I touch, I ruin…_

“And I can’t email you or call you. You didn’t even _tell_ me you had some fancy business trip. Me! I mean, I know we were kind of not exactly seeing eye to eye that whole year with Sinnerman crap and---”

“You opting to cheerlead, ahem, _Pecker_ babies?” Lucifer asked, even as he kept drumming his fingers on the table.

“Yeah, but then…I dunno…it felt like we were doing better, Lucifer. I was trying hard to help you when Chloe was in Rome and when you all started mostly dating and being your buddy to tell Eve stories too. I just…you left me. I was struggling so hard with leaving religion and, uh, other stuff.” Was Miss Lopez blushing? “And then you were just gone.”

He dared to look up from the table to her and hunched his shoulders at the sight of tears streaming down her face.

_Look at everything I’ve put Miss Lopez through…_

“I am truly sorry. If I could explain what my father needed of me and why there was no form of communication where I was, believe me, I would. I---”

“Did you even miss me?” Ella asked, rubbing at her eyes and sniffling.

“Believe me when I say that where I was, I missed your sunny disposition and even your blasted hugs dearly, Miss Lopez.” He sighed and kept drumming, desperate for anything to keep his mind from over-focusing on more of the mess he’d made. The continual collateral damage that he left in his wake. “If I could explain, I would. I swear it.”

“I’m standing right here. You could try? What? You’re MI-6?”

Lucifer chuckled at that. “Hardly.”

“Dan’s right and your dad’s some weirdo cult leader so it wasn’t technically legal work. That’s fine, you know. Ricardo runs a damn chop-shop in Detroit, and I keep my mouth shut about that.”

“To be fair to my arsehole of a father, he is a stickler for law and order.”

“Then why didn’t you call me? Three years, Lucifer. You just shoved me aside for three years and expect me to pick up the pieces like nothing happened and it _hurts_.”

He sighed. _Tap, tap, tap_. “And, again, you have no way to understand this, but for me it was far longer.”

“Then just explain it!” Miss Lopez said, throwing her hands up in the air. Then, she looked toward the table. “Yeesh, dude, you could at least stop tapping that annoying beat on my table and holy shit!”

Lucifer stilled his hand finally. The look on Ella’s face wasn’t angry all of a sudden, but her wide eyes and shallow breathing were reminiscent of something else. Something worse. Glancing down. He stilled when he registered the scarred, burned skin of his right hand, the mass of waxy flesh and furrows where his normal appearance should have been. At least so far they’d been spared the damned claws.

“Miss Lopez,” he said, slowly and quietly.

Then, he made the mistake of holding up both hands, palms flat to calm her. His left was as marred and burned as his right. He hadn’t even _felt_ the change. He’d been better about knowing how the difference felt, at least in Hell.

Lucifer dropped his hands and started again. “I’m sorry. I’ll see myself out.”

Miss Lopez spit out and angry, fast litany in Spanish, “I really am that freaking dumb, you asshole. You’ve been telling the truth the whole time?”

Lucifer grinned and couldn’t resist. “_Sí, te dije que era el diablo. Me crees, hoy?_”

She blinked but kept her gaze squarely on his hands. “You speak Spanish?”

“I speak everything. It goes with the territory. Can’t tempt someone without a common language between us.”

“Oh, wow, so that’s how the desire thing actually works. I figured you were like a hypnotist.”

“How dare you. I’m a sight better than that,” Lucifer replied, finally deciding to shove his hands away in his trouser pockets. He wasn’t sure how long it would take him to calm down enough to change them back, but right now he was quite worked up and didn’t need the Detective or anyone else for that matter spying them. “I…yes, Miss Lopez, I’m actually the real, literal, and very Biblical Devil. I never lied.”

“You compartmentalized a lot. I mean, dude, I just thought you were pathetically method. I just…what the fuck?”

“I’m sorry. Telling the Detective went epically poorly at first. By the time we were in a better place, and I wanted to even risk it with someone else, well, I was summoned away to Hell. Long story short, demon uprisings can take quite a few years to quell and the mobile reception down there is shit.”

Miss Lopez blinked. “You were back in Hell?”

“Well, there’s no way to communicate from there to here. Believe me, I wanted to a million times, especially with the Detective, but I could not.”

He was surprised how relieved he was to feel Miss Lopez’s arms around his middle for the first time in what felt like forever. He’d never been comfortable with hugs, with physical affection of any kind. Sex was one thing, lacked the intimacy of an actual friendly hug. He just…his parents had never been big on them. (The Goddess was literally light and couldn’t have anyway.) And the only sibling who so very long ago was tactile with him like that was Rae Rae. It was just…why would anyone bother to hug _him_?

“You went to Hell. Dude, that must have been awful.”

He loosened a bit in her embrace. “To be fair, when I go, I’m not technically the one being tortured.”

“But demons! And like not being here having fun with us and again angry demons!” She released him from her grip, but her eyes grew super wide. “Oh my God! Wait, sorry, you know what I mean. That’s like…so Amenadiel is an angel and Charlie’s half and then Maze really is a demon.” She blanched as her mind went through even more machinations. “Holy shit! Eve is like _that Eve_, right?”

“She and I met in the Garden of Eden, yes.”

“I made out with like my so-many-greats-grandma. This is messed up. I just…whoa!”

He sighed and pulled his hands out of his pockets, annoyed that they were still as scarred and ruined as ever. “Miss Lopez, are you alright? Shall I try to discreetly fetch you some water? You aren’t going to faint, are you?”

“Maybe a little. Wait? So what’s Linda?”

“A psychiatrist from Palo Alto originally.” He shrugged. “Not everyone I associate with is a Celestial or a demon or special. Linda’s normal, as far as I know. Daniel too.” He sighed and set his hands at his side. “I suppose, technically, the Detective isn’t quite, but she’s human.”

“Huh?”

“She’s a miracle, long story, and a lot of meddling from my father. It just makes her immune to my abilities and charms.”

“Oh right, cause you can’t desire her.”

“Yes, so I do have a few human friends who are just human.”

Miss Lopez sighed. “I see dead people…well, one dead person…this ghost I’ve known since I was eight, so I guess I’m not quite normal either.” She frowned. “I think I’d rather be a miracle than a medium.”

“I assure you you’re not. You need to have a long chat with Rae Rae or as I call my sister, Azrael.”

Ella swore again. “_No me jodas_! Are you fucking with me?”

“No, my sister has been a bit out of her job description with you. I haven’t known her in the past to befriend a human who was accidentally put on her list but wasn’t actually scheduled to die. Heaven makes mistakes sometimes, don’t be surprised. However, you’re not a medium, never were.” He winked at her. “You might be a bit of an angel whisperer. Linda mentioned that Charlie’s quite fond of you, and I know Amenadiel respects your kindness and generosity.”

“Angels,” she whispered, crossing herself, and Lucifer noticed the crucifix around her neck. He hadn’t realized she’d gone back to wearing it, but it had slipped out from her shirt collar. “Four angels. I know four…well three and a half angels.”

“You know two angels and a Nephilim,” Lucifer corrected. Then, he held out his reddened hands again. “I hardly count.”

She surprised him by reaching out and taking his hands in hers. “Fallen ones count too, I think.” Ella frowned at his hands. “Do they hurt?”

“They did once, but that was long ago, when I first Fell and before dinosaurs were even gone from this planet. The parts of me that are scarred…it’s been too long to feel it any longer.” He sighed. “I suppose if I were to slip with my control around anyone _not_ in the know, you would be the optimum choice. Welcome to the Celestial Insider club by the way.”

“Uh, thanks?”

“Anyway, perhaps you’re the easiest person to explain it to. You’re the one who likes all those dungeons and dragons and fantasy trifles.”

“Ooh, so dragons are real?”

“Hardly,” he replied. “I just meant…for lack of a better term or as Linda likes to put it, angels self-actualize. What we think about ourselves subconsciously, we manifest.” He shrugged. “Technically, the burns aren’t actually there…the Devilish visage I have too when I so need to call on it is actually a glamour. I used to think it was more than that, but it’s all very much psychosomatic.”

“So, deep down you _wanted_ your hands to be scarred messes?”

“Ta ever so,” Lucifer drawled, but he didn’t pull his hands away. “Not exactly, but it’s just…it’s how I feel about myself sometimes. I suppose I was anxious I was about to be thrown out of your lab or that, I’m not sure, that we weren’t friends any longer.”

Ella shook her head. “If you’d stonewalled me…maybe? I don’t like being taken for granted. I mean, I try really hard to be upbeat and there for everyone else, but it’s hard not to have people in my corner too. I learned that year I was struggling with my faith that I needed my own support system. I have a better one now, and the ‘tribe’s’ stronger now and bigger with Eve in it---and so never going to forget I made out with like my all the greats grandma yeesh---but I just…you can’t just throw me aside, you know?”

“Miss Lopez, if I’d had a choice, I never would have gone to Hell. I assure you.”

She grinned. “I get it now. I’m definitely _not_ more important than stopping a demon apocalypse or whatever. Makes perfect sense.” She squeezed his hands tightly. “It’s okay, you know. I mean, it’s not okay that apparently you psychosomatically think you should look like a total Looney Tunes all-red devil cause you’re so not like that.”

He shook his head. “You’ve very little concept of what I’ve done of late. It was…demons only react to certain things, Miss Lopez. None of them include hugs and puppies.”

“No, dude, I get that, but I want you to know that I’m super confused, and God’s real which is cool but like weird to not only have to rely on faith now, and I know the Angel of Death---”

“Caught that, did you?”

“Catechism, hello!” She smiled more broadly. “But you? As long as you don’t vanish without a heads up…I’ll get it if you have big heaven-and-hell business next time, totally…but as long as you don’t take me for granted, we’re good.” She squeezed his hands one last time and pulled her own away. “Honestly, we’re better than good.”

He nodded and let out a long sigh of relief when he spied the normal if a bit pale skin of his hands. “Well, I seem to be settled now that we’re not fighting.”  


“Chloe knows about the whole thing, right? I mean, you said she knew about the Devil stuff, but does she know, uh, you look different sometimes too, subconscious stuff or not?”

Lucifer nodded. “The Detective not-so-artfully refers to what you just saw as a flare-up of my Devil side. She’s worried they might happen now that I’m back home and working toward a more normal balance in my life. Please, if you could avoid mentioning this, that would be most helpful. I’ll just explain to the Detective I told you who I was and showed you my wings as proof.”

Ella slapped his shoulder, and he rolled with the motion lest she break her hand on him. “Dude! You have wings? I guess I figured a fallen angel wouldn’t anymore.”

He had two sets to be fair, though he was never sure which pair was closest to the surface at any one time. The feathered set helped him ascend to his throne when he needed it. The abominations of leathery flesh and claws, well, that helped him drive the fear of _himself_ into his underlings. Both useful, but one so utterly debased that it hurt him to look at that pair.

“One day, Miss Lopez, I shall show you. Not now and certainly not in the precinct.”

“Ooh, will you take me flying?” She asked, batting large eyes back up at him.

He chuckled and squeezed her shoulders. “Don’t push your luck.”


	3. Commanding

  1. **Commanding**

The Detective had a meeting with the lieutenant she couldn’t get out of, and Daniel had been assigned a stakeout with his partner Diaz on the other end of the city. It had left Lucifer of all unlikely people with the task of picking up Beatrice from school. Seriously, was thirteen that much younger than sixteen? Could they not yet teach the urchin to drive? He’d have done it with her at eight, albeit then she wouldn’t have reached the Corvette’s pedals.

Still, it was how he found himself wandering the halls of a place that reminded him a bit too much like Hell for his liking---with its seemingly endless, grey corridors---and how it reeked of body odor and, far worse, Axe Body Spray. Had the little heathens _never_ heard of bathing? Dear Dad, what were humans teaching their spawn these days?

Lucifer twisted down the halls and finally spied a familiar head of long, dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail that he knew so well. Four months back home, and he found the easiest routine he’d come to was the domesticity at the Detective’s apartment with her and Beatrice. He wasn’t sure why---probably a mix of the Detective knowing and being alright with everything as well as the spawn being more bearable as she’d grown---but it was just the easiest part of his days.

However, what he didn’t approve of were the two guys, each far bigger than the spawn, tossing a part of her solar system project back and forth between them.

“Give it back!”

“You don’t need it anymore, Espinoza,” a boy who was heavyset and seemed to be missing a neck called to her. “You got your **A** and showed off already.”

The other boy, one almost as swarthy as Beatrice herself, caught the loose model of what had once been Saturn in his hands and crushed the Styrofoam. “Yeah, you freaking messed up the curve. Stupid teacher’s pet. I mean, you’re always sucking up to Mr. Cochran.”

Beatrice set what was left of her project on the floor and shoved the larger boy hard. Lucifer nodded approvingly from where he stood. Mazikeen had worked well with her. The urchin angled her body low and plunged into the rotund kid’s plentiful girth with her shoulder, enough to send him tripping backwards.

“Screw you guys. If you did your homework, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

The swarthy lad didn’t seem to like her tone and shoved her up against the nearest locker, stomping on her project as he did it. “That’s going to cost you, Espinoza.”

Enough was bloody well enough. Lucifer wasn’t one to fight someone else’s battles, not when he knew someone was trained or ready to fight on their own. Nothing more humiliating than being relegated to the bench when you could take care of yourself. However, Beatrice needed help, and he would never deny her that.

He stalked across the expanse of the hallway faster than the humans around him could perceive the movement. When the boys and Beatrice realized what had happened, all three yipped, albeit the urchin recovered quickly and happily shouted out his name.

“Lucifer! You’re here!”

He nodded, and when he spoke, his voice was low and commanding. It was the tone he’d used at the Mayan to send the demons back to Hell, the one he’d used to try and command Dromos away from Lux to begin with, and the last sounds so many traitorous demons had ever heard before he enacted the sentence he gave out as judge, jury, and vaunted executioner.

The Devil’s voice.

“You let her go, now!”

The arsehole child holding the spawn against the locker dropped her shirt sleeves and pulled away from the locker. His entire body shook. The other boy had finally righted himself, and Lucifer was far from surprised to find that piglet stank of more body fluids than just sweat. Both bullies gathered near each other and seemed to clutch at one another for comfort.

Lucifer certainly had none to offer. His voice reverberated through the hall around him, echoing and multiplying in odd ways he’d only associated before with the cavernous geography of Hell.

“You let Beatrice go, and you never touch her again.” He felt his eyes burn with his command as well but forced himself not to go farther. They were menaces but the miscreants were still children, and he did not wish to drive them mad. “If you do, you’ll only have _me_ to answer to.”

The boys keened a bit before the swarthier one nodded and rushed out a garbled apology. Lucifer took in several deep breaths and his vision was no longer tinted crimson. His voice, however, remained as domineering as ever.

“Leave now, whilst I still wish to show mercy.”

The two bullies must have set a land speed record (for humans) as they rushed down the hall. Lucifer felt the anger still riling through him. Something deep and dark from the centuries in Hell was rearing its ugly head again. He had been challenged---what was _his_ had been hurt---and if those boys were Dromos or Squee or a hundred other demons, he’d have torn them limb from limb for _starters_. But they were only human and minors at that. He could not harm them. The Detective would never forgive him, even if they’d hurt Beatrice first. She was too adherent to justice for that. Besides, ruining one school project didn’t merit flaying, even if he sincerely wished it did in that moment.

A soft hand was on his shoulder then. “Lucifer, you can…we need to go now.”

He turned and eyed her, his vision still normal and at least his eyes back to brown. But his voice was so rough and loud, even when he tried to whisper. “Are you alright?”

She nodded. “I’m fine, and I’m really not scared. It’s fine because I don’t think…I know there are things you do that don’t affect Mom or me. So, the whole weird-ass voice thing, we’re good, but I so don’t want to explain this to my principal, okay?” She scooped up what was left of her project and then looked up at him. “Please, Lucifer, let’s go home. It’s fine now, promise.”

He let out a shuddering breath and balled his hands up at his sides. He knew so intimately again what it was to rend flesh and crush bone, but those vermin didn’t deserve that. He could do it, but mercy…he had promised mercy, and he always kept his word.

Lucifer finally turned toward the way he’d come and gave her a courtly bow; his voice finally his fully his own again. “After you, urchin.”

“Can I drive?”

“Assuredly not. I’d teach you in a heartbeat but on your mother’s car. None of my babies deserve a scratch.”

**

The drive started awkwardly. Not that the situation he’d been dumped in had begun normally or even in the human way. Still, for a while, he’d driven or crawled bumper to bumper in the Los Angeles rush hour traffic back towards the Detective’s place and said nothing, too riled and upset to be sure that he could trust his voice. Not that Beatrice seemed affected by it. Maybe some things were inherited. He honestly didn’t know. He’d never tried to elicit desires from the urchin. It seemed wrong to do on a child, and, more than that, she’d always been plainly blunt about them anyway. It was something both he and Maze had always liked about the urchin, after all.

She was or at least had been the embodiment of “what you see is what you get.”

Finally, the child seemed to understand that the talk---whatever kind of talk this was supposed to be---needed to be handled by her. Dad knew they had more than enough time in the traffic to converse.

“I know, you know.”

He arched an eyebrow at her and, finally, spoke again. “Do you now? What exactly do you think you know?”

“That you’re like the real Devil.”

“Did your mother tell you?” he asked, sure confusion was coloring his words. He honestly wasn’t sure if the Detective had explained his absence truthfully with Beatrice or not. Hell, even Lucifer thought it was best for the urchin _not_ to truly know everything, if it could be helped. Not that the devil wasn’t out of the bag now.

“No, but I’m smart and both my parents are detectives, duh. I mean, you can do stuff, and other people respond to it, right? But not Mom. Then, it’s like you scared that bully once when we first met, and Malcolm shot you in the gut, but you didn’t die. Maze showed me _her_ real face for Halloween when I was eight, so, duh, a real demon has to hang out with real Satan, right?”

“I honestly prefer ‘Lucifer’ or ‘Old Scratch.’”

She shrugged as if a moniker were so simple a thing. “Okay, fine, and when…that time I came to your penthouse to meet Eve and those guys broke in. I didn’t see much, but one of them really did shoot you like six times, and it was like _nothing_ happened. I mean, I admit that’s weird since you totally got shot once by my mom---she told me---and then by Malcolm, but humans don’t exactly get a clip emptied into them like nothing was wrong and then throw a guy through a couch.”

“Perhaps I could have been more discreet.”

“Are you or Maze ever?”

“Well, no, you do have me there.”

Beatrice beamed at him. “Mom never said anything. She doesn’t know I know about Maze either. I just let her think that it was whatever. I knew when you were ‘on a business trip’ that had to mean like Hell stuff, right?”

“Assuredly so, urchin, and that’s the most you’ll _ever_ hear from me about Hell so don’t bother asking again.”

She pouted and that slightly constipated look on her face was pure Daniel. “I am _not_ a little kid anymore.”

“You’re barely old enough for a PG-13 film in the cinema on your own. You’re not exactly ready to know about Hell and, honestly urchin, I’ve no interest in reliving it for you. It’s far from pleasant, earned reputation and all that. I hated being there, and I missed earth and you and your mother terribly. I’m happy to be back.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m still not scared.”

He gritted his teeth as they caught another interminable red light. “You should be. Did you not see the reaction of your arsehole classmates? You know how there are boogeymen?”

“Well not for real…” she blinked at him. “Wait are they real?”

“No, and I suppose between you and Miss Lopez, I shall need a big chart to explain what truly exists and what does not. Before you get your hopes up, as far as I know there’s no Loch Ness monster or Bigfoot either.”

“Vampires?”

“Urchin.”

“Well?”

“There are other types of monsters, but most of cryptozoology is hokum, assuredly.”

Her grin stretched so wide he almost feared it would split her face. “Wicked!”

“Yes, well, I suppose that I should remind you, spawn, that I’m the big bad that all other villains fear, quite literally. There’s hardly a demon out there, save for Mazikeen, who doesn’t quake at the sight of me. I’ll let you fill in the blanks for how I’ve managed that over the years.”

She let out a low whistle but still smiled at him. The Detective’s child was, perhaps, a bit bent. Maybe he should have reined in his demon more over the years. It was possible that such early infernal exposure hadn’t been good for her. “Okay, so in Hell you’re a badass.”  


“I beg your pardon. I’m quite the badass here too.”  


“Here, you play Monopoly, complain about which piece you get, and wear novelty aprons when you make dinner. You’re not that scary, Satan.”

He wasn’t sure whether to be affronted or relieved that Beatrice had so little respect for him. He settled on somewhat offended. “It’s _Lucifer_, child. Also, I can be very intimidating. Ask half the criminals your mother’s put away just this year. No one loves an interrogation from the Devil.”

“I…thank you. I could have handled them.”

He nodded. “Mazikeen has taught you very well. You had great leverage for knocking that fat lad flat on his back.”  


“I’d have gotten Javier too. I just…thanks. It made it easier. The voice thing is pretty creepy.”

He sighed. “Are you alright? You’re not scared, are you?”

“Um, I’m pretty sure I just established that I’m so not. You’re Lucifer, and you’re my friend and Mom’s…uh…well boyfriend I guess is a good word even if you have to be like super super old.”

“Thank you, urchin, you have quite the way with words.”

“I try,” she said, reaching for the radio and putting on some Dad-awful pop he couldn’t actually stand. He had clearly fallen down on the job of helping the spawn develop musical taste. “Could you always do the voice thing? Is that how you question people?”

“No, just the desire mojo,” he admitted. “I can usually get the deepest desire out of anyone. You, I suspect, and your mother are immune.” And he would not answer why to that because he had not yet explained to the Detective how she was a miracle and had no interest into diving into that hornet’s nest first with the spawn. “I suppose the voice was something I perfected a bit during my last sojourn in Hell.”

“Well, it’s very intimidating. I’m pretty sure that Manny peed himself.”

Lucifer grinned and sped up on ramp to the freeway too. “I assure you, child, that miscreant did just that.”

“Awesome, so I have this math teacher who’s a real bastard and---”

“No.”

“Maybe?”

“Your mother would kill me.”

“But I’m worth it.”

“Assuredly not. Just look out the window, Beatrice.”

**

He found the Detective standing at the doorway to Beatrice’s room. They’d come home and once the Detective had come back from the precinct, shared dinner, discussed why and how Beatrice _knew everything_, and then he’d let mother and daughter sort out their respective feelings on all things infernal in private while he’d smoked on her porch. His girls must have finished their conversation as the urchin had passed out in her room, even with the Detective keeping a close watch over her.

He hesitated on his way in from the veranda. Sidling close to the Detective, he waited for her permission to snake his arm around her.

She reached for him first, even as she slid the barn door shut so that they wouldn’t interrupt the child’s slumber. “I wish she didn’t know.”

He stiffened at her touch then but didn’t force himself away from her. “Are you ashamed of me?”

The Detective turned her head and stared up at him, eyes shinier than normal. “No, never. I promised you after everything with Kinley and then Dromos…I’m _not_ scared of that part of you or of any of you. I just…she’s not even in high school yet. Heaven and Hell stuff is a lot for me or Linda to wade through. It’s a lot for Eve, and she’s had more experience mostly than the rest of us ‘just humans.’”

He sighed and kissed the top of her head. “Perhaps, but she’s been best friends with Mazikeen since she was seven and being partially raised by a demon changes one’s perspective. She’d put it together long before she confronted me about it today.”

The Detective nodded and pulled away long enough to head to the kitchen and pour herself a glass of the painfully cheap swill she called wine (well, at least it didn’t come from a box). “Then, I might just kill Maze.”

“You could try, but Hell’s best torturer can take almost anyone in a fight, Detective.”

“Trixie doesn’t need to know all this. It can get people killed.”

He thought of Charlotte and nodded. “Understandable, but mostly things have stayed on an even keel. Besides,” he said, unable to keep his voice from hitting its lower register, to keep the _otherness_ from creeping in. “I would bring down an infinite amount of wrath on any ne’er-do-well who ever thought of touching a hair on the urchin’s head. I’ve promised you that more than once now, and I am a devil of my word.”

The Detective sighed and drained her glass but did not go for a second. “I know that, but she’s _thirteen_. Damn…Hell…ugh, you know what I mean. When she first met Maze, she was _seven_. That’s a lot to put on a kid, Lucifer.”

He leaned over the island as he considered her words. “Is it a lot to put on you too, Chloe?”

“No, I want to, and I love you. I know that Trixie loves you too.”

“Better than the Douche?”

“Nope but nice try at humor.”

He shrugged. “I almost deflected.”

“You didn’t,” she said, although she smirked, and it lessened the tension between them. “I want to be part of all of this and, yeah, I know that means eventually I couldn’t keep Trixie innocent, but my monkey…I just wanted her not to have to think about demons and the Devil and danger and things like that until she was older.”

He stood straighter and raised his chin to her defiantly. “I think knowing that the Devil is in your corner is somewhat reassuring. After all, no one crosses me now. I can promise you that. She’s more secure than almost any human as ever been.” He frowned as he pondered that. “Perhaps not more than Miss Lopez, maybe equal. It can’t hurt to have the Angel of Death in your pocket.”

The Detective blinked back at him. “Huh?”

“My sister, Azrael, is the Angel of Death. She’s been Miss Lopez’s best friend since Miss Lopez was eight-years-old, and Miss Lopez seems well adjusted and painfully perky.”  


“Ella said she saw a ghost.”

“Azrael is not as fond of only telling the truth as I am. Still, perhaps…I do not know…perhaps it’s best if maybe Miss Lopez and Beatrice spent a bit of extra time together. Both have knowing a fair bit too much about the supernatural world early on in common. But you don’t regret that the urchin knows me, do you?”

His voice shouldn’t waver like that when he asked his question. It shouldn’t have been hard to even breathe as he asked the question, but it was. If the Detective…if after all this time, _Chloe_ was having second thoughts about them because of involving Beatrice deeper into everything, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. He loved Chloe desperately---that was no secret between any realm of existence---but at this point in his life, he refused to be her secret shame.

She stalked from her corner of the island and held him close, her body spooned up behind his. “No, not ever. Not after Rome or watching you bleed out at Lux. Without you, then Malcolm or Ponyboy would have killed her. My monkey _wouldn’t even be here_.”

“But?”

“But I just want things to be easy for her, and I’m not sure everything that you and Maze might have initiated her into is going to make her life easier or harder. I guess I was trying to keep her innocent. Not that I’ve done a great job with protecting her from criminals, but---and it sounds nuts---but what if her just _knowing_ that demons are for really real and Hell’s a thing beyond just you and Maze, well, what if it draws demons to her?”

“I assure you,” Lucifer replied, his voice a low growl that echoed through the whole room. “No demon will venture to earth again. Not ever. Even if Remiel wasn’t on duty and bloodthirsty as a huntress, what I did to re-establish order in Hell, well, no demon would be fool enough to go topside. Not now.”

She stiffened against him. “We never talked about…”

“I do not wish to. I was in Hell, and now I’m not. I don’t have to go back and am fully retired as King. That’s all that matters---that neither Charlie nor I must bear that cross. Anything else that happened there doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does. Do you even talk about that with Linda?”

“We see each other. I talk through my thoughts about you or the urchin, about our cases. When Miss Lopez and I were strained, I talked about that as well. Hell isn’t for mortals. You’re not wrong on that. It’s over, and there’s little point in subjecting either of you to its horrors.”

“That’s not a good idea.”

“It’s an excellent one, Detective. I promise you that. You do not want to know about Hell.” He sighed and turned around in her grip. “Now, would you like to retire to your room or not? I know the urchin is in, but, perhaps, just something quiet tonight.”

“You mean if you hold me long enough, I’ll pretend we _still_ haven’t had that conversation?”

“Perhaps,” he replied before he kissed her. “Or perhaps I just want you all to myself.”


	4. Touch-Starved

  1. **Touch-Starved**

He wasn’t sure if it was a good omen, a bad omen, or utterly hilarious that Ella had come to their cookout wearing the same unicorn t-shirt as Beatrice. Considering the wide grin on both girls’ faces and the huge hug they’d exchanged (good, maybe they’d distract each other with their shared hugging passions), he was fairly certain it had been sheer coincidence. Even his sister had chuckled at the sight after traipsing in through the door after Miss Lopez.

However, things had, after a bit of awkward introductions between his sister and the Detective, settled into an easy rhythm. It might have gone more awkwardly at first if Beatrice knew enough about angels to know who was tasked with which duty, but she was not. And, while his sister’s propensity to flat out lie was a problem, at least Azrael was smart enough and had enough restraint _not_ to mention her vocation.

He’d finished barbequing everything out on the veranda and the five of them settled around the table to eat. He was hopeful things would go better than the last dinner he’d staged at the Detective’s former resident alongside Junior. Since the Douche wasn’t invited, the odds that things would go smoothly were in his favor.

Beatrice, unsurprisingly, was the first to speak after she set down her half-eaten hot dog. “Okay, so like, can I ask questions?”

The Detective pushed around a bit of the potato salad on her plate but didn’t seem too interested in food yet. “That was the idea behind everything, Monkey.”

Ella nodded even as she crunched noisily on some crisps. “Totally, kiddo. I mean, this is all pretty new to me too.” Miss Lopez cut a glare toward his sister, who seemed to have the humility to at least focus extra hard on her plate. “Rae Rae might not have mentioned the whole being an angel gig to me until recently.”

Lucifer shrugged. “Well, the important thing before this derails into chastising my sister is to realize we’re all on the same page now. Heaven and Hell and everything in between is real and you have a true angel at your table, urchin. Ask away on any question you so desire.”

Miss Lopez smirked a bit at that. “Does that count for all of us?”

He sighed and bit into his hamburger, chewing thoughtfully before answering. “I will _not_ answer most questions about Hell, so don’t ask. I suppose you’ll want to know about what I did to Hitler---everyone asks, so I’ll spot you there---but it’s not best for dinner conversation.”

Ella went slightly pale but kept eating. “I don’t think I need to know about that, dude.”

Beatrice nodded. “But about Hell?”

“It’s terribly dull, there’s no food there or music that’s not utterly terrible and out of tune on purpose, and forget about a decent Scotch. It’s got a lake of fire but not as much flames as you’d think, though some. It’s mostly ash and endless corridors of doors for each sinner’s room. Oh, and the demons are not usually as smart or as competent as Mazikeen. Although the other Lilim are the best of the lot. I think that covers the bases. I don’t wish to speak of more since I’m no longer bound to it. That’s Duma and Remiel’s thankless task now.”

His sister’s eyes widened across the table. “Duma, I can kind of get. Ever since…” she trailed off because explaining what had happened to their sibling in Sodom and Gomorra was not for middle school ears. But Azrael recovered quickly. “…he hasn’t been a huge fan of the Silver City in years.”

“Silver City?” Beatrice asked, frowning.

“Oh, yeah, Heaven? That’s what we call it. It’s kind of like ancient Greek architecture gone up to eleven and the streets are lined with gold and…” Azrael blushed, looking away from him.

He understood her sudden self-censoring, but it had been literal eons since he’d been to the Silver City, and he didn’t miss it. He’d missed Azrael, but that was a gap bridged for now, an uneasy and developing truce. He, perhaps, missed how it had been in the very early years, when the universe was new, and Mother was lovely and as full of light as her form. He missed what had been but not how it was even when he’d been expelled. As it was now, with countless millennia for his siblings to mock and belittle him, with their record-setting absentee father…well, it had never truly been home.

Lucifer offered his sister a small smile. “It is rather lovely. Dull, at least by my standards.”

The Detective rolled her eyes. “Meaning you can’t keep Vice busy up there?”

Azrael shook her head. “Oh no, nothing mind altering like that. But I’m surprised at Remy. I don’t see her much and, okay, we’re not exactly close, but she likes the hunt and she really likes heaven. I mean, it’s kind of like she wanted to be Amenadiel when we were younger and so being top dog up there was kind of her thing.”  


He swept his left hand out and shrugged. “The chance to rain down punishment on any aggressive demons was apparently too much for her to pass up.”  


“I wouldn’t want the job,” his sister finished. “No offense.”

“Well, I didn’t pick it either,” Lucifer replied. “But sure, please feel free to tell them every detail about the Silver City. It’s at least kid appropriate.”

Beatrice shook her head. “I’m not a kid!”

Miss Lopez seemed to understand the delicate nature of the situation. “Well, I’m way north of my thirties, kiddo, and I don’t think I’m into all the horror details of Hell either.” She winked at him, and he appreciated her steering the urchin away from the salacious topics.

Honestly, what he’d mentioned about Hell was mostly all there was to say. Unless someone wanted a _Saw_-like breakdown of how torture proceeded, which he would _not_ give, there wasn’t much to say. Oddly, like the Silver City itself, Hell rarely changed.

Static nature of immortality. It was why Earth was always better.

Beatrice pursed her lips, and Lucifer figured that getting details out of Mazikeen would be her next stop. “Okay, so what’s it like being an angel?”

His sister frowned and pushed her glasses (no, he had no idea why she needed them) up her nose. “I don’t have anything to compare it to, I guess.” She sighed. “Sometimes…okay, most of the time I’m pretty busy.”

“So, it’s not just laying around on clouds all day and playing the harp?” The Detective asked, grinning a little at her joke.

“That’s our brother, Castiel. He leads all the hymn stuff now, and he’s not great at it. I’m glad I’m working on business a lot on Earth.” Again, bully for sis for not mention the “of Death” part to her job description. “I mean, he’s not awful, but it was better before.”

Miss Lopez quirked her head at his sister even as she bit into another bit of her hot dog. “Who did the hymns before?”

His sister’s eyes got wider even behind the large, owlish glasses. “Oh, you know, it got kind of passed around.”

Ella’s expression soured a little. “I thought we were being more honest about things, Rae Rae.”

His sister cut her eyes to him, and he nodded. That was far better and more distracting at least than the urchin or anyone else wanting to talk about Hell. “Well, it wasn’t exactly my thing to tell, but Lu used to. He was really good at it. Castiel takes too long and just…like I said, glad I’m on errands.”

The Detective and Beatrice both regarded him. The urchin squirmed in her seat while a slightly glassy-eyed look came over the Detective, as if she couldn’t quite reconcile his current debauched club owner persona with an angel in a white robe (and yes it had been back then) leading hymns praising Dad. Well, we’d all been naïve once.

“You?” Beatrice asked. “You did all the hymn stuff?”

“I did more than that, but, yes, I had to learn about music from somewhere at first, didn’t I?”

“Wow, that’s really cool!” the urchin enthused.

The Detective considered that. “It actually would explain a lot.”

“And he was sooo better than Castiel. It’s really a shame. The humans there have no idea what they were missing.”

Beatrice’s eyes glittered as she seemed to realize the full ramifications of having Azrael around. “Ooh, do you have embarrassing stories of Lucifer when you guys were kids like me?”

“We weren’t kids, exactly,” his sister admitted. “We were created fully grown, but we were young once, sure. I have a lot of stories, actually.”  


Lucifer coughed. “I’m sure all of them will be a true joy to live down.”

“Mostly, Lu was a good brother. I mean, uh, the Rebellion thing was not so great, but he was a lot nicer to me than Michael or Raphael.”

Ella shook her head. “This is so crazy. I mean, it’s like getting this whole backstage pass at a concert. Like Michael? As in ‘Sword of God’ Michael? He’s your brother too. I mean, of course he is. All the angels are related and that’s just really cool.”

Lucifer gave a sharp snort. “It is not. He’s our _least_ likable sibling and with a host of hundreds, that’s saying a lot. Never did care much for my twin.”

The Detective dropped her fork and it some of her potato salad splattered onto her shirt. “A twin?”

“Perhaps this dinner didn’t go as I had planned,” Lucifer moaned. “I wasn’t exactly anticipating sharing tales of the Silver City long ago.”

“Are you identical?” Beatrice probed.

“Most of the time,” he conceded in deference to his more devilish side. “I think only Mother, Father, and Azrael could tell us apart successfully in the Silver City. Doesn’t make him any less of a prat though.”

A look of something he couldn’t quite place flickered over the Detective’s face before she coughed and focused back on him. _Interesting_. “Do you get along with any of your siblings outside of Rae Rae and Amenadiel?”  


“Nope,” he said, popping the ‘p.’ “Well, I’m glad Duma wanted the thankless job of taking Hell for six months at a go. So, I think we’re square. But, honestly, angels are usually painfully self-righteous. Makes for a humorless sort, and it’s never been my bent. Too dour for my taste.”

Miss Lopez’s face fell at that. “I…wow, I guess they’d be more like you two. I mean, yeah, Amenadiel’s reserved, but he’s still nice.”  


Azrael rolled her eyes. “To be fair, Lu never got along with most of our brothers and sisters. They’re not all bad. Michael is a jerk, yeah, and Castiel might be a little tone def, but uh some people have different takes on the Silver City than you might, Els.”

“Oh, it’s still very boring. I mean, what’s the point of a place without drugs at all and---”

The Detective coughed. “Lucifer, Trixie can hear you.”

“You know, you’re not supposed to do drugs. The DARE officers come to our school every year and…” the offspring started.

He smirked back at the Detective. “Oh, I assure you, Beatrice, I know everything there is to know about illegal substances.”

“Dude!” Miss Lopez replied, slapping him on the arm. “Not cool.”

“And not helpful,” the Detective continued and then turned her focus to the spawn. “Monkey, we had some ulterior motives with the cookout stuff today. Honestly, I’m sure it’s a lot…no, scratch that…_I know_ it’s a lot to find out Heaven and Hell is real and there are demons and the Devil and angels.”

Beatrice shrugged, and he wasn’t sure whether he was upset with Maze for her brazenness or grateful. Probably a little of both. “I’ve known about demons since I was eight. It’s pretty obvious the other stuff was there too.”

“Yeah, but Monkey, it’s okay if you have lots of questions or, I dunno, if it feels weird you’re friends with angels and demons. I mean, Ella’s been friends with Rae Rae since she was about the same age you and Maze got close. You’re not the only kid with colorful friends.”

Lucifer mellowed a bit at the Detective’s ham fisted approached after that line. “I think I’m an _excellent_ friend.”

His sister chuckled. “I’m not slouch either! I just get busy. You have no idea how packed my schedule is, Lu.”

Miss Lopez regarded them both before winking at them. “You’re both good in your own way.” Then she looked back at Beatrice. “Yeah, Trix, if you want to ever talk about things…well, I mean angels and demons are kind of different, sometimes. I mean, I like Maze a lot but she’s pretty direct about some things, so I know it’s not like one hundred percent the same. But if you ever want to talk about how big knowing all this stuff is or having really special friends is…cause I know kids at school…they never really believe that, well, I’m here.”

The urchin considered all of that and nodded. “Could I come over?”

“Huh?” Miss Lopez replied.

“I mean, like, I dunno…tonight. Can I do a sleepover with you and Rae Rae. I have like so many questions, and I don’t think Lucifer wants to answer them all.”

He arched an eyebrow at his sister. “Nothing about Hell. I don’t care how often you’ve come to the gates. You promise me that?”

“Sure, I can do that, Lu, but I won’t give you any promises about blackmail fodder from the Silver City.”

“How dare you!”

“Come on, there’s nothing bad about tales from when we were young. You were a sweet angel once, Sammy.”

“I was always the one with an edge,” Lucifer said, glaring back at her. “I was not a fluffy bunny of a thing ever.”

The Detective was the first to ask. “‘Sammy?’”

“My original name was not Lucifer, but I far prefer the appellation I have now,” he replied. “If you tell all my secrets, Azrael, I shall not consider us reconciled again.”

Ella slapped his shoulder again. “Oh, live a little, Lucifer. I’m sure Rae Rae has cute stories.”

“Oh, I do!” His sister replied, taking off her glasses and cleaning them against the hem of her fish t-shirt. “So, we can totally do that, the slumber party thing. I mean, Trixie, your totally welcome to the angel insider club!”

Beatrice’s eyes lit up. “Mom, please, can I?”

Lucifer wanted to beg too. If the urchin were back at Miss Lopez’s apartment for the night, then it opened them up to other possibilities here. Things he’d desperately been working toward with the Detective for months now and ever since his return. However, he was the former King of Hell, and making others beg both in bed and away from it was more of his domain.

The Detective looked at Ella. “Would that be alright? I don’t want to impose or anything?”

Miss Lopez smiled broadly. “Anything for a fellow unicorn aficionado. Besides, I super want to hear all the stories of angel Lucifer too. I mean, not that you’re not great now.”

“I’m perfection, Miss Lopez.”

“But…come on, Rae Rae, give us all the insider stories.”

He sighed and shook his head. “I’ve been seriously outvoted, haven’t I?”

The Detective nodded and grinned at him. “You abdicated, hon. Welcome to democracy.”

He was going to have to reconsider his feelings on free will at least a bit if it meant it gave his sister the ability to squeal about young Samael’s blind idiocy, but, then again, he was a sucker for whatever made Miss Lopez and Beatrice happy. Damn their puppy dog eye double-team.

“Well, I suppose if it’s in the greater service of acclimating Beatrice to the Celestial world, then it’s something I’ll have to suffer through.”

“Exactly, Lu, besides I do promise not to embarrass you…much,” Azrael replied.

In retrospect, he shouldn’t have taught her how to wriggle out of contract clauses.

**

Worshipping Chloe was something he had to have been made for. Even if she were the miracle placed in his path, and that was a conversation they’d have to have eventually just like the blasted one about how Hell had really gone, Lucifer still knew deep in his bones that all of it---the Silver City and his failed Rebellion, Hell and his centuries of isolation squelching an uprising aimed against him (oh the irony), and everything in between---had brought him to _her_, and that was no accident. Design or not. His own desires finally leading him to something wonderful or not, he could not be more in love with any being than he was with Chloe.

So, now that she was laid bare before him on her sheets and with a full weekend with no cases, no urchin, and nothing else to worry either of them, Lucifer planned to show every inch of her body exactly how deeply the Devil could fall into idolatry as well.

“You’re beautiful.”

The words were small and would probably have sounded trite with any lover he’d had before. Honestly, they were small, not enough to express how much he cared about the Detective. How much he needed her, but she was gorgeous, like something that would have put Botticelli or Raphael’s (the painter, not his useless brother or the turtle for that matter) works to shame.

But all that he could get lose from his lips was those two words, said quietly and reverently, like a prayer.

She regarded him, her blue eyes heavily lidded with lust and smiled. “I really missed you.”

“Well, alas, Detective, be careful what you wish for because I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere forever, really. Double-edged sword of an immortal warming your bed.”

He let the tone stay light. They had so many things they didn’t talk about. It had barely been five months back, and they hadn’t yet slept together---though tonight would see an end to that. Still, it was one of those things they left unsaid between them: he could not grow old whilst she would. As a miracle, Chloe had a fast pass to the Silver City when she did die. He would always be banned. They had now, and it was all they had, and he’d agreed to it because even if forty or maybe fifty years with her was all that he could be blessed with, Lucifer would hungrily take it.

The Detective nodded, and her hair, loose for once from its sensible styles, fell over the soft, supple skin of her breasts. “Do you even talk your way through sex?”

“I could be silent…perhaps.”

“Really?”

“Well, there are so many fine uses for a tongue, much better than even my voice, Chloe.” He purred that last part, grinning as she seemed to shiver only at the power of his words.

Lucifer knelt at the edge of the Detective’s bed and started his supplication by kissing his way up each leg, sparing attention for the back of the knee and the tender skin there. Then, he kept trailing his lips up her left leg until he met the soft curls at the apex of her thighs. Reaching down, he traced the fingers of his left hand over her leg.

She moaned and mewled against him, her back arching as she did it.

Lucifer grinned at her. “I thought you were all about virtues, Detective. Haven’t you ever heard about the wonders of patience?”

“I swear I’ll get my gun and give you a matching shot if you tease me like this too long.”

His grin widened, and he turned to look as his fingers played with the creamy flesh of her thigh. “But I live to tempt, Detective. That takes time too.”

Lucifer started to say something else, when memories assaulted him. Flesh and skin he’d seen more of his fair share of lately. Felt the way skin gave so easily under his claws, the way blood poured from flayed muscle. The smell of blood so caustic and acidic from demons like Squee, as they screamed and begged for the mercy that Lucifer could not---would never---give. Not when his family had been directly threatened.

There was no possible mercy for that.

He shuddered and blinked, trying to banish the visions away, the reminders for what he’d done for decades at first in Hell. For how much punishment he’d meted out until even Lilim were scared to look him in the eye, although none of them had ever even hinted at rebellion and would never debase themselves to be aligned with Dromos. The skin that shredded, the muscles that were torn asunder, and the rivulets turned to eventual rivers of blood that streamed from his throne.

But he could not.

The Detective hissed and then sat up. “Lucifer, how, what the Hel…what’s going on?” She turned on the light, and the harsh glare of one of those damned economical bulbs stabbed into his eyes.

He looked down and stilled when he found that those…no, _his_ claws were back. Just like in Miss Lopez’s lab, he hadn’t even _felt_ himself change, hadn’t realized that his left hand had sprouted that same fierce talons that had torn through over a hundred demons. Underneath his hand and the damned---so very damned---claws, the Detective’s…_Chloe’s_ thigh was marred with blood.

He hadn’t cut deeply but four long scratches, as if a cat had gotten her, were etched against the skin there: crimson on white.

Lucifer bolted up immediately, glad that he hadn’t stripped yet more than his jacket and waist coat. He had to get out of there. Had to…Dear Dad, what had he _done_?

Chloe hissed a bit and looked down at her leg and then at the claws of his left hand. Try as he might to concentrate, the offending appendages wouldn’t disappear. Couldn’t. “I…are you alright?”

He started to pace and ran his right hand through his hair, loosening it into a nascent nest of curls. “How can you even ask me that?”

“Because you seem really freaked out and because I know you didn’t mean this,” she said, gesturing to her leg, which, whilst still bleeding, seemed to be slowing down. “Lucifer? Can you even put your claws away?”

He looked to the floor and wished he could sink into it. Alas, even amongst his myriad of abilities, that was not one of them. “Not now, no.”

The Detective stood and pulled her sheet to her. She winced when she put weight on her left leg at first but recovered quickly and regarded him with nothing but concern. “Have you had flare-ups before?”

He looked up from the carpet. “Must I keep reminding you? It’s not a condition, Detective. I’ve hardly got a case of, well, whatever. It’s just…obviously,” he said, holding up his left hand. “There are things I needed to leave back in Hell. _That_ side of myself was one of them. It hasn’t been bad, and I…I should never have hurt you.”  


“I’ll get some peroxide on it and a few band-aids and it won’t be a problem. I had worse that one time I met Margaret the Chicken, trust me.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Ella’s had some weird hobbies. Anyway, I’m fine,” she said, easing closer to him and planting a hand on his shoulder. He flinched at the gesture, if only because it had to be true that a miracle shouldn’t be sullied by the likes of him.

_Samael---Poison of God_.

Accurate, even before he’d Fallen. It wouldn’t even surprise Lucifer if dear old Dad had seen all of this coming, had given him an apt moniker forewarning of the pain and futility to come.

He pulled away from her and tried to ignore the way her eyes were too shiny. “You shouldn’t be.” Lucifer held up his left hand. “I…you and the urchin are my line. I _don’t_ hurt you. I’m not bloody well supposed to, but here we are!”

“I’m more worried about you. Like I said, if I can weather Margaret the Bathtub Chicken, I’ll survive an accidental graze from my boyfriend. Lucifer, if you’re having trouble controlling your Devil side…it means you’re still having trouble with how you see yourself.”

“Fucking self-actualization,” he spat. “Why any deity would insist on that, I’ll never understand.”

“Still,” she said, reaching for him again but stilling her hand in mid-air when he backed away. “You’ve been trying to put up a great front for five months, but I see it. Of course, I do. If there are hazards with dating an immortal, then there are issues with dating a detective too. I see how you space out. I gathered from Trixie you weren’t exactly in complete control of the whole voice of the King of Hell thing at her school. You never talk about whatever trauma you had to go through back there---”

“I didn’t go through trauma. I _doled_ it out, Chloe, and that’s exactly the problem.” _I liked doling it out._ But he couldn’t say that last part out loud, couldn’t explain how part of him had missed the carnage and the torture on earth, had been left languishing while he’d tamed himself for her. The Detective could never understand, and then she’d send him away. Maybe she should have already. “There’s nothing traumatic about being in charge.”

“And I had nightmares for months after I killed Malcolm. He was going to murder Trixie, but I still had to deal with the ramifications of taking a human life.”

His voice was thick but at least his own when he spoke. “I’m not human, Detective.” He waved his claws in the air. “We’ve both been readily reminded of that tonight. I…controlling demons did not bother me there, did not keep me up nights.”

“But you’re home now, and the things you had to do for me and Trixie…for Charlie…I can’t say I’ll understand all of them, but back here they have to affect you.” She gestured toward him. “We can both see they are so if you could just share it with me or Linda. Please. You can’t keep it bottled up. Clearly, your body isn’t going to let that even happen.”

He opened his mouth, desperate to say anything, but he’d shattered bone and popped out eyeballs, castrated underlings slowly and brutally, and jammed his hand through sternums to pull out still beating hearts. Lucifer had racked his brains for the most creative torments---and painful ones---in order to ensure the demons of Hell would never possess anyone again.

And part of him had enjoyed it.

What was there to say to that?

Lucifer sighed and shoved his hand in his trouser pocket. “I have to go, Detective. I’ll call you when I’m ready for another consulting case.”

“You can’t run. We’re past that. Damn it; that’s what you do every time.”

“Then, you should thank me, Chloe, because I’m clearly not fit to be around right now.” He hurried down the stairs and the to Corvette, ignoring her cries. He’d have taken flight since it would have been faster, but he honestly wasn’t sure the wings he’d could have called forth would have been the right ones.

No, scratch that.

Lucifer damn well knew they’d be the abominations, and he couldn’t bear for her to see those yet again. So, he had to settle for racing off into the night, tires squealing on pavement as he drove away.


	5. Ad Astra Per Aspera

  1. **Ad Astra Per Aspera**

He didn’t call the Detective for two weeks. She texted and emailed and called him. Eventually, settling down her volley of contact to a brief yet open-ended text each morning, something along the lines of promising to talk. _To understand_ when he was ready. It was kind of her; his miracle was nothing if not nauseatingly selfless and forthright, but she didn’t know what he’d done. Couldn’t even begin to fathom it.

For once, well, he’d thought he’d finally found some small way to earn a fraction of salvation. Sod that. He didn’t give a toss about reconciling with Father, not really. He knew he’d gotten more concessions out of God Johnson than he ever would out of dear old Dad. But with the Detective, it felt like things were possible, that there was more than even the fun yet fleeting carnal pleasures he’d muddled through with previously on earth.

But he couldn’t…he’d _hurt_ her. Scratching her crossed lines he didn’t want to think about and was all he _could_ focus on at the same time. If he had so little control over himself that he’d cut into her skin without even realizing it, well, until he could truly control his self-actualization problems, he couldn’t be around her. Couldn’t be around anyone.

Except Jack Daniels.

Alcohol was something his mother had invented eons ago. His father never had any fun, never could have conceived of it. As he started in on another endless handle, he thought fondly of the Goddess and hoped that in her new universe she was happier, had found the peace denied to her by his bastard of a father.

It took Celestial amounts for him to get soused, but he’d been doing an admirable job of working on it for the last little bit, had even scheduled an extra delivery since he’d drained some of Lux’s top shelf earlier in the week. The warmth was borrowed but it still trickled down his throat and into his gullet, still gave him something more than the deep emptiness of the last couple weeks.

How could he face the Detective or the spawn again? How could he even trust himself on a case?

Sighing, Lucifer slumped over and set his forehead on against the marble of his private bar. It was cool and soothed him, at least the sweaty, sticky feeling working over his skin. And maybe he’d been drinking a bit too much of late. He was certain of it when the elevator dinged gratingly, and he expected a lecture from the Detective. Instead, he heard the clomping of sneakered feet and assumed instead that perhaps the urchin had stolen her mother’s phone and Uber account information again.

What he had not anticipated was the quick chain of Spanish curses aimed his way.

Blinking up, he regarded Ella, who had come straight from her lab and still even had her oversized goggles around her neck. “Miss Lopez?”

“You idiot! I thought when you got back, you’d make Chloe cry less.”

He swallowed hard and ignored the way his throat burned as badly as it had when he’d first landed in the lake of fire upon his banishment to Hell. “Is she?”

“Not at work, _tonto_, but I know when she wears extra big sunglasses indoors what it means. Besides, we’re getting backlogged with cases on our unit and the team doesn’t solve as well without _el diablo_ in our corner.” Ella hopped up onto the stool beside him---and she was such a tornado of energy that he tended to forget how tiny she actually was---and yanked the bottle of whiskey away from him. “What’s up?”

He surprised himself by hiccupping a little and then glared at the scientist. “I could fry you to a cinder with a thought, you were aware of that, yes?”

To Miss Lopez’s credit she stilled but didn’t yip or shiver. “Really?”

“Well, I’m probably rusty on that end of things. Haven’t been the ‘Lightbringer’ as such in a long time, but I’ve an affinity for light and fire, yes.”

“Great, my friend---Old Scratch, the pyro.” She rolled her eyes. “Do I need to call in Amenadiel and Rae Rae for like a family ass-kicking because I so will. Dude, I mean, not to put a fine point on it---no I really mean to actually---but you have what you want. You don’t have to go back to Hell. You have your siblings taking care of Hell now, and you’re home with Chloe. She knows, and she is so far gone on you that it’s really cute. But you’re here, drinking your ass off alone, and, uh, okay, maybe not the best time to bring it up, but your face? Super red, dude. It’s like _South Park_ devil red. You’re clearly not okay, so do you want to talk about it?”

He blanched at her words. Good thing he hadn’t decided to partake of anything at Lux’s bar, although he paid his employees handsomely for discretion. “What now?”

“Flare-up problems, then?”

“I wish we weren’t calling it that. It makes it sound like I’ve a troublesome STD.”

Miss Lopez sighed and patted his hand. “Chloe doesn’t care, you know?”  


“You lot are quite warped, especially the Detective. She _should_ care.”

“So you spend years pursuing her and then come back to her with whatever compromise you made with your sister and brother to just decide she needs to stay away from you? Dude, that makes like less than zero sense.”

He sighed and forced himself to keep his gaze level with Ella’s. “I hurt her. I didn’t mean to, but I did.” Lucifer held up his hands. “They don’t just get red and burned, Miss Lopez.”

“Well, that’s how they were in the lab that one time.”

He sighed and ran a hand over his jaw. “They can get worse if I’m not careful, apparently. I…there are claws.” He hissed that last word but refused to look away. Once, he’d been God’s favorite (what a laugh) and then the Prince of his realm (a shit one but still), he couldn’t just look away from Miss Lopez’s appraisal.

Damn it, he wasn’t weak.

Even if he clearly was or he’d have talked everything out with the Detective by now.

Soft brown eyes grew so very wide and, unexpectedly, a lap full of forensic scientist was hugging him fiercely. “Buddy, oh man. Bring it in. I mean, I had like no idea. Chloe didn’t mention that part and the day after you fought, she seemed totally fine. I’m really sorry!”

“I…it was not severe, but I scratched her at least as deeply as a cat might have and it could have been so much worse if I hadn’t regained focus. I…” he sighed deeply. “I do not wish to paint you a picture as some things should remain private, especially for the Detective’s sense of modesty, but things could have escalated and she doesn’t…_no one_ deserves that.” _Or me_.

“So drinking your way to needing a new liver is the solution?”

“I can’t get cirrhosis.”

“Ugh, I grew out of the being trashed after my faith struggling year,” she replied. “I think I had way, way too much Tequila then.”

He frowned and patted the back of her hand, grateful she let him and was as normal about it as she ever had been. “Miss Lopez, I wish I had been better able to comfort you that year. I heard you tried drastic things like purchase a bathtub chicken? What in my father’s name even is that/”

“A very smelly idea. I liked Margaret, but you know, after a year, I couldn’t deal with the mess. However, I’m better now, but you can’t just give up because of some hiccups. You didn’t have the whole, uh, claws problem the whole time right?”

“No, it’s psychosomatic.”

“Yup, exactly, like you mentioned. Thus, dude, the best way to deal with it is to _not_ let things fester and build up and make your worry even more.” She shrugged. “Besides, tomorrow is Trixie’s birthday, and you aren’t going to ditch that too, are you? I mean, I know Chloe said her big party is on Saturday and the whole slumber party thing, but a few of us were invited to give her dinner and presents and stuff. You’re going to spite the kiddo too?”  


“I don’t wish to hurt either of them,” he said, enunciating the word hurt with special care as if Ella couldn’t hear him or was a bit thick.

“Then, just holing up in your penthouse and ignoring their texts and a fourteen-year-old’s birthday is the surest way to do just that.”

He waved his hands---still perfectly normal---in front of Miss Lopez. “But if I scratch them…”

“You won’t!”

“If I did or worse. I can’t…I could not bear sending them to a hospital or worse.”

“Then you have to get better at the whole self-actualization angel crap, right?” She sighed and blew a stray bit of bangs from her eyes. “Look, Luce…um…ifer, whatever. Don’t miss out after three years of doing just that on Trixie’s birthday. Go, give her something, and have cake. I’m sure you won’t go all Godzilla at Chloe’s apartment. Make a start, you know? Haven’t you all lost enough time over the last three years already?”

He quirked his head at Ella and couldn’t keep himself from smiling, however so slightly. “Miss Lopez, despite the unflattering image you’ve just painted---”

“Okay so Stitch like from the Disney movie. Take your monster pick.”

“Ta ever so,” he replied. “I…it’s a good point. I forget sometimes how fast mortal life spans are. Three years is quite a leap for all of you, especially the urchin.” He sighed. “I’ll go tomorrow, but I…I can’t imagine how the Detective could ever be pleased to see me again.”

Ella rolled her eyes and hugged him again tightly before sliding off her stool. “Because we all like you and missed you tons. This is the good part now, Lucifer. I…see you tomorrow?”

“I shall endeavor to do my best.”

She shook her head. “Oh that’s not a great promise there, buddy. You promise me you’ll go to Chloe’s house tomorrow and bring a great present for Trixie.”

“Azrael has squealed about me, hasn’t she?”

“I know you like to follow the spirit of an idea and not the letter.” Miss Lopez conceded. “She also mentioned you all literally did have halos way back when and that is, without a doubt, the cutest thought I’ve ever had. You, curly haired with an actual halo.”

“I outgrew the phase, assuredly.”

She winked at him. “Say the magic words and I’ll leave.”

“Fine, Miss Lopez, I promise I will come to the Decker residence tomorrow and will bring Trixie a wonderful gift.”

“Not drugs or a car right?”

“Why can’t fourteen-year-olds drive yet?”

“Something reasonable!”

“Define reasonable to the former King of Hell?” he winked back at her. “I promise it will be both lovely and something the urchin will enjoy.”

“Great! Then you and Chloe can work it out; you two crazy kids.”

He sighed and stood up as well. Lucifer could at least be a gentleman and show Ella to the elevator. “Let us start with the birthday festivities, Miss Lopez. I…perhaps my time in Hell changed more than I first thought.”

“And maybe some things never changed. I mean, adorable Deckerstar babies!”

He blanched at that. “Assuredly not.”

“Well if there’s a Charlie…”

“I need to get you laid, Miss Lopez. Do you need a wingman. I swear you meddling in my dating life is not always optimum.”

“I’m a great wing-woman!”

“Perhaps, but let’s not talk about portmanteau-enhanced offspring. Celestials normally don’t and I certainly do not do that. Also, I detest the little ankle biters. They’re worse than demons. Besides, I feel I’ve already, though inadvertently, gotten Eve and Linda set up. The last human in my orbit may want something as well. I know a somewhat exacerbating fallen cherub. Would that suffice?”

Miss Lopez shook her head as she waited for the elevator doors to open. “I dunno if I need a like underworld or heavenly dating service.”

“Usually most angels have little time for humanity. Amenadiel and Azrael tend to be exceptions. Although, if you’re ever curious about a Celestial blind date, there is some promise in Raphael now that he’s matured somewhat. I suppose forensic tech and healer are not exactly equivalent, but you both know a great deal about the human body, one supposes.”

“Dude really?”

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. He put a hand around the edge of one to keep it from shutting. “If you would stop spouting off about Deckerstar anything let along spawn, I’ll wrangle you a date with any sibling you so choose, somehow. I’m good at deals.”

“Duh.”

“Oh, but not Michael as it would be both completely bizarre, and he’s an arse.”

“Um, no. I think and, no offense, but I think trying the human dating pool works for me for right now.” She finished slipping into the elevator car.

He winked. “Well, don’t be shy. I am sure Linda could tell you something pithy about once you go angel…”

“And dude, so done.”

“Offer will stand, Miss Lopez. Have a good night.”

“You too, and I better see you tomorrow or I will send the Angel of Death _and_ Amenadiel after you.”

Meddlers. He was surrounded by meddlers.

**

“You’re late.”

There was something about being evaluated and then scorned by a fourteen-year-old girl that was humbling in a way even being thrown from the Silver City hadn’t been. Lucifer swallowed hard and set the massive wrapped box he’d been carrying down just by the Detective’s kitchen island. Then, he shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and swayed back and forth a bit on his heels.

“Hello to you too, child.”

Beatrice narrowed her eyes at him and pointed at the empty table. The Detective must have been in the middle of running up to her room when he came in as she wasn’t around in the kitchen. “Everyone else has already been here. We had dinner like two hours ago and even Maze had to go out on bounty stuff too. I mean, my dad’s gonna pick me up any minute for birthday time tonight. Besides,” she said, setting her hands on her hips and glaring up at him with a ferocity he recognized as her mother’s. “you’ve been avoiding us.”

Lucifer nodded and sighed. “Urchin, things can be complicated.”

“I know. I get it. You’re the Devil, but it’s not like you had some kind of ‘go to Hell’ business cause Maze would have hinted if it was like Apocalypse level stuff. So, it was something else where you weren’t returning my texts for like almost three weeks.” She frowned, the composure she’d had crumbled, her lower lip trembling and her voice hitting a higher register as she spoke. “Are you mad at me?”

And, somehow, his Father had never made him feel as much like crap as his own idiocy with Beatrice and the Detective made him feel. He was, after all, a master of doing things to himself.

He knelt low, even though he still met Beatrice eye-to-eye like that, and met her penetrating gaze. “Have you and the Detective talked about why I’ve been on break from the precinct and from mostly everything else, spawn?”

“Maze said it was probably a s---”

“I asked if you and your mother had spoken, not Mazikeen. She has a large mouth and an even larger imagination.”

“Well, okay, Mom said you didn’t have a fight but that something happened and she got hurt a little. I don’t…I’m not filling in all the blanks, but I figured make out bruises?”

He pulled his hands from his pockets, grateful they were as pink-skinned and normal as they could be. “I didn’t mean to, but I scratched your mother. I…since Hell there have been many things different about me, and my voice is only one of them.”

“Mom wasn’t mad. We were just mad you kept _not_ calling and then, hello! You totally skipped my birthday dinner with Miss Ella and Miss Linda and Amenadiel and everyone. You’re family too, so you should be here.” It seemed the urchin was done restraining herself or being upset (or at least upset enough to glare at him). She flung herself across the kitchen and wrapped him tightly in a hug. “Dummy, we missed _you_.”

Lucifer stiffened and didn’t dare wrap his arms around her in return. He couldn’t risk underestimating his strength or accidentally sprouting anything that might cut into her, hurt her. He just didn’t trust himself. “Child, I know, but if I didn’t even realize I was doing these things, then it wasn’t safe…it’s probably still not safe.”

She pulled away. “But we want you here.”

“And I desperately want to be here. I can literally say I’ve negotiated things with heaven and hell and fought me way back here just for the two of you, but I can’t…if I’m dangerous, it’s best to keep a distance.”

“For who?” the Detective asked, coming down the stairs.

It was odd how beautiful his miracle was. She wasn’t in anything extraordinary. Honestly, in point of fact, her jeans had a couple icing stains on it and she had a smudge of maybe mustard---what had Beatrice demanded for her dinner anyway?---on her cheek. Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun with bangs hanging in her eyes, and yet, he’d never seen any actress or model or deity (and he knew a few) who looked as ravishing as she did in that moment.

Lucifer stood again and set one hand on the large package he’d brought for the urchin. “Detective, I apologize for being late. I think you’ll find that usually I’m just fashionably late, but tonight, I have overshot my mark.”

The Detective strode down the rest of the steps and came to stand behind her daughter, placing her hands delicately on top of Beatrice’s shoulders. “You don’t have to hide away, and I thought we were past running.”

He glanced down at her leg. The Detective was wearing jeans, so there was no way to see how well the scratches had healed. They’d never been deep; that much was true. But they never should have been there, marring such perfection, in the first damn place.

“I do not wish to cause either of you harm. I refuse to be the reason you’re injured.”

“And if we’re really sad?” The spawn asked, and it made him feel worse than he had when he’d been marched through the Silver City after the Rebellion had failed. “Is it better then?”

“You must be feeling like you’re safer,” the Detective pressed.

He sighed and drummed his fingers along the edge of the box. “I may have had a little birdie---or an overly honest forensic scientist---come and ream me out quite thoroughly. Miss Lopez pointed out that, especially after my three years lost back in Hell, I was being epically myopic.”  


“Or super dumb,” the child replied.

Her mother squeezed her shoulders. “Trixie-babe, that’s not nice.”

“Still, Miss Ella isn’t wrong! You wouldn’t really hurt us, except when we don’t get to see you, Lucifer.”

He nodded. “I shall try to be around more. I am unsure if I feel ready for consulting again, Detective, but I will not ‘ghost’ you any longer, and if you two will still have me, I’ll come home here as you like.” He coughed and there was no way he was shy on some things. He was very much the Devil for Dad’s sakes, but then again, there were some subjects that seemed impossible to discuss in front of the urchin. “But if you ever feel unsafe in my presence, you merely need to---”

The urchin burst forth from her mother’s grip and squeezed him again as hard as an anaconda wrapped around prey. She hugged him and buried her head in his chest. “Like I said, dummy, we’re not gonna get tired of you. Or be scared. I mean, you made Manny completely freak out and finally leave me alone. You’re safe. I mean, you’re my favorite Devil.”

“I’m the only Devil, except no substitutes,” he joked. Lucifer stiffened again when the Det…when _Chloe _stepped forward and hugged him too. He lowered his head to the crown of her head and sniffed her hair. It smelled of freesia and honey. “I’m sorry, Chloe. I really am. I have learned to run when things get hard, and it’s not the correct instinct. I never had to worry before because my sojourns to earth were so short. I’ve never had permanence in anything topside and I know I need to do better…but I hurt you and---”

She and pulled away and urged the child to do the same. Bringing a finger to his lips, the Detective shushed him. “I’m really fine. Nothing some Neosporin, a bit of rest, and a few band-aids won’t fix. I have had way worse from the Kraken.”

Beatrice---the scamp---giggled at the comparison. “So, see Lucifer. You’re way less scary than Grandma’s chihuahua.”

“I ruled Hell for eons. I’m the monster all other monsters fear. I certainly rank higher than a wisp of a mutt.”

“First, the Kraken is purebred. Second, he’s really mean! You’re not as scary, Lucifer,” the urchin insisted.

“Well, perhaps I’ll have to face off against this fearsome beast myself someday.” He looked between the two Decker girls and shuffled a bit nervously. “Shall I stay or---”

“If you try and leave, I’ll never talk to you again,” Beatrice replied, crossing her arms over her chest and trying to look far older than she was. One day, and far too soon, Lucifer was certain both the Douche and the Detective would have quite the rebellious adolescent on their hands. Well, some rebellion was good for the soul after all. He’d always thought so. “Duh, so stay. Ooh, can I open your present cause, seriously, it’s freaking huge and I wanna know.”

The Detective eyed the box which stood up to his chest and was as broad across as the urchin was. “How expensive was this? Wait, I probably do not want to know. Going forward, we’re going to have so many guidelines on appropriate presents.”

“Does that count for when she turns sixteen because I’ve options on vehicles to choose from and---”

“No, Lucifer.”  


Beatrice’s eyes lit up like a pinball machine. “Mom! Please, let’s think big picture here.”

The Detective rolled her eyes. “Lucifer is _not_ Santa Claus.”

“Well, hardly. I exist, Detective.” He smirked back at her, glad for the easy rhythm between them again. Miss Lopez’s advice had been beyond helpful, and someone was getting the all-star set of passes to that Comic Con malarkey she fancied so much come time. “Thus, I’m far better than some fat man with a cookie obsession. Not that a fat man can’t be lovely and there’s…you know, some stories I’ll save for later. Urchin, open away!”

Beatrice didn’t have to be told twice. She ripped eagerly into the wrapping and shrieked at a decibel level that would have left a banshee proud (he’d known at least two in his long life). He flinched a bit but beamed as she hugged the unwrapped box closer to her. “Oh my God!”

“He had _nothing_ to do with it, child. I assure you.” Lucifer rolled his eyes at the spawn. Over the years, he’d mostly grown accustomed to human expressions, to how they all seemed to want to credit his blasted Father with things. However, it was assuredly not what he wished to hear after working so hard to get something the spawn would like. “This was all my idea. For all I know, dear old Dad has farted off to another universe or who knows what. From what Amenadiel has said and what I’ve managed to get out of Duma---lots of hand gestures there---no one has heard from Dad in decades. Thus, that telescope is all from me.”

She cooed over it, especially the beauty of its brass setting. “This is amazing. I mean, I always wanted a telescope, but they can be a lot, Lucifer, and wow!”

The Detective smiled but still gave him a quick once over that told Lucifer in no uncertain terms that they’d be discussing spoiling Beatrice later. He had no idea why that mattered. It was only money after all, and he had more than he could ever use.

“Yes, thank you. This was really thoughtful, Lucifer.” The Detective added. He decided now would not be the time (nor would it ever be) to mention it had been several thousand dollars. Lucifer knew that would yield nothing but a lecture from her. Well-meaning, but sometimes fun needed to be had. “Monkey,” she added, patting the urchin’s shoulder “We need to get this to your room. Your dad is gonna be here soon, and we want to make sure you’re ready to go with him.”

“Sure!” the child chirped. “Lucifer, do you want to help me get it put away?”

He eyed the Detective. Beatrice was not the ten-year-old he’d left behind. Truthfully, she was growing fast into being a teenager and wasn’t the sticky, overeager mess (mostly) that all small children seemed to be. Still, as much as he cared for her, it always left him off kilter to be alone with her. It probably had to do with how easily she gave affection. It was…outside of him and Azrael, well, the Host weren’t big on hugging or familial affection. Beatrice’s overtures were newer to him than he’d like to admit. Not completely unwelcome after so long but overwhelming all the same.

He always felt like he never deserved it.

“Can he, Mom?”

The Detective shook her head. “Well, I doubt you can drag it by yourself, Monkey, and it’s a few yards away. So, sure, you and Lucifer get the box put away and your grab your bag. We want your dad to have a good birthday night with you too, kiddo.”

Beatrice nodded and gestured to the box. “Come on!”

“I am hardly your valet, child.”  


“Mom said once you held a whole SVU still when it was speeding away. That box can’t weigh anything to you.”

He sniffed a bit. “You’ve caught me there. I’m still not designed to schlep for mortals, so consider this a one time offer, and me being responsible for my own parcel. Come now, urchin, as you wish.”

**

Lucifer set the box down by her bed but frowned as Beatrice shut the door quickly behind him. “Have I missed something here?”

The child shook her head and sat down on her bed. She went to work shoving a few t-shirts and assorted shorts into a backpack as she started to speak. “I’m serious. You don’t get to just leave when you’re scared. I totally do get ‘hey demons are uprising’ or ‘oh shit, the world’s literally ending.’ I do. But if you’re scared about like hurting us…you won’t. I mean it. Mom was really sad, and I was upset, and you just can’t anymore.”

“If I’m unsafe---”

“You’re _not_. You always protect me and Mom. Always. Like with Malcolm or with those guys who attacked me and Eve at your place. You found that cure for her somehow for the poison, and I figure that involved a lot of Hell stuff that you just don’t want to talk about.”

“It does.”

“See! Then you really care. I know…I mean I’m sure it’s completely different and hard being back here after being in Hell. You can talk about it.”

“Not with you, child. It’s a place that neither you or your mother will ever have to go. I’d never allow it.”

“But if you’re upset…maybe Miss Linda?”

And what would be the point of that? What could he possibly do or say? For Linda he’d have to explain that he spent centuries in Hell pulling out spines and doing far worse to save Charlie from such a fate. With the Detective and Beatrice, they were so very good, and they wanted to see him as their hero. Lucifer loved that (and hated it a bit too), but he didn’t want to lose their admiration. If either of the Decker girls ever heard about what he’d actually done to the likes of Dromos or Squee to make an example of them to the other demons, then they’d stop looking at him with admiration.

They’d stop wanting to see him at all.

“Lucifer?” The spawn said, and he realized he’d taken too long of a pause, that the memories had threatened to creep up again.

“Perhaps I will find someone to speak with. I…maybe I can start with more leveling with Mazikeen. She understands Hell even better than I do.”

“I’m here though.”

“And I appreciate that, and I’ll try not to disappoint you or your mother. That I swear.”

The urchin stood and slung her backpack over her shoulder. “You don’t. Just don’t shut us out, Lucifer, especially Mom. She missed you so much every day for three years, and now you’re back. The only thing that is as bad as you having to go back to Hell is you just not talking to her at all. Please, the last three weeks super sucked.”

He swallowed and it was like chunks of glass were stuck in his throat. Lucifer leaned over and clapped his hand over the urchin’s shoulder. “I swear, child, that I will protect you and your mother to the best of my abilities.”

Like that the night at the Mayan more than three (earthly) years ago flooded his mind. Dromos had raised an army under his own nose, and he hadn’t even seen it coming. Had dozens of demons following his lead and swarming the Detective, moving in to tear her apart. If he hadn’t…if he _couldn’t have_ drawn on that dark, demonic side of himself, he had no doubt that Dromos, Squee, and the others would have torn her limb from bloodied limb. His vision swam for a moment and when he blinked up, Lucifer could only see Beatrice in shades of crimson.

He looked down---anywhere but directly at her---for those eyes were punishment and never intended for the urchin.

To her credit, the child didn’t even still or stop breathing. Of course, the offspring seemed to have limitless energy and little regard for boundaries or normalcy, period. She was hardly scared of Hell’s most fearsome torturer, but it was utter lunacy and stupidity to stare the Devil in the eyes.

A soft, small hand was on his cheek. “Hey, Lucifer. It’s okay. I mean, I brought stuff up with all the Hell talk, and okay so after everything with Malcolm and the airport hangar?”

“Following, Beatrice,” he said, still focused on the floor. And of course his voice was more booming and all consuming than it normally was. Hellish things always seemed to find the worst possible time to creep out in him.

“Well, the school and like everything…they said I had to go to a counselor because it was pretty awful. I mean, you and Mom saved the day cause that’s what you do.” She sighed a little over his shoulder. “Um, minus you getting shot.”

“Minor inconvenience for the Prince of Darkness. I assure you.”

“Yeah, you got better but it was a lot. I had tons of nightmares at first cause Malcolm was super creepy, you know?”

He frowned but didn’t dare look her in the eyes when his own were tainted with that blasted red. No chance in Heaven or Hell he’d risk driving Beatrice mad. “I’m so very sorry. I wish fervently that your mother or I had figured out his machinations faster, urchin.”

“He was pretty smart, so not your fault.” She patted his shoulder this time. “Look, I had bad dreams and remembered so much from it. Sometimes even at school, things would set me off and that’s why I needed to talk to someone. I know you think I’m like still ten, but I’m not.”

“Believe me. I’m keenly aware of how much time has passed when I wasn’t around.” He blinked again and still his other eyes couldn’t be fully shunted away.

“Okay, but like maybe just think about talking---like really talking---with Maze or especially Miss Linda since that’s like her job and who else can therapy angels and the Devil and stuff. I mean, let’s be super honest. Charlie has wings now, so she’s pretty good at rolling with the, uh, weird stuff.”

Lucifer frowned and that bit of news jarred everything lose. The world was coming up in a typical color scheme again. Looking back to Beatrice, he felt his jaw go slack. “Huh, hadn’t heard that had come up yet.”

And maybe he’d been avoiding Amenadiel and his nephew socially more than he realized. In session, he mostly diverted Linda as best he could with the latest cases and relationship angst. Whenever she pressed more on the Celestial side of things or on _Hell_, he tried his best to maneuver back to any other topic or, sometimes, frankly just left her office altogether. He had no idea that his Nephilim nephew had sprouted wings yet.

“Oh yeah, a little before you got, well, back. They’re super cute. Really tiny but dark just like Amenadiel’s. He can’t do much with them, but they pop out sometimes when he’s surprised. It’s why I make so much bank babysitting him. I mean, I’d do it anyway cause he’s adorable, but like Miss Linda only trusts me or Eve and Maze with him.” Beatrice considered that. “Actually, I can kind of get that. I mean, Eve’s the first mom so she’d be good with kids, right?”

Lucifer decided not to remind the urchin that she’d also raised the first murderer and that had all involved fratricide. To be fair, though, he assumed it was because Cain took after Adam. He’d always been a bastard, and Eve was many things, but a lovely person was chief amongst them. Naïve, yes. Sometimes selfish, but she was never cruel, and it was all that Cain had seemed capable of.

“Yes, well, I suppose talking more with Linda might not be a bad idea.” Again, not saying that he would talk about Hell with her. Because he was ancient, and he knew better than anyone how to skate both promises and the exact letter of a deal.

“Alright, just so you know that the Devil stuff doesn’t bother me or Mom like at all.”

He clamped his mouth shut before he had the suicidal and slightly pathetic urge to respond directly to the urchin. Because while all that he was---as far as the Detective knew---didn’t bother her, it certainly bothered _him_. Lucifer was, gratefully so, saved by the bell as the front door rang, signaling the arrival of the Douche for Beatrice-hand off.

She frowned up at him. “It’ll be fast. Dad promised to take me to the Griffith Park Observatory tonight for their newest show. You don’t have to like greet him and stuff. We’ll be gone in five minutes, just long enough for Mom to go through the emergency number and let me know all the changes in possibly plans spiel she’s done like a billion times.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

The urchin reached out and hugged him tightly one last time. “Goodnight, Lucifer. Like I said, it’s really okay, you know? The one thing you _can’t_ do is shut off your phone, dummy.” She started to the sliding door but stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. “Oh, by the way, if you want to get me my own Corvette when I’m sixteen, that’s fine. I mean, Mom doesn’t have to know if you keep the ‘Vette at Lux.”

He shook his head. “Urchin, you’ve always impressed me with your deal making skills. We’ll negotiate soon enough.”

“Awesome.”


	6. The Dam Breaks

  1. **The Dam Breaks**

No one had ever accused the Devil of being chaste before. Yes, technically, there was a time back in the Silver City when the angel Samael, which he was _certainly not now_, had known nothing of that type of carnal desire. Honestly, it was probably a huge component of Dad’s servitude plans. All the Host were related, and that _assuredly_ was nothing any of them had ever wanted amongst themselves. Outside of Amenadiel and himself, he wasn’t even sure if any of his siblings had ever even had sex. He doubted it. Most of them were so happy to live in their little bubble in the Silver City, to subsist in a static cage that never changed---as stuck in its own loops as his former Kingdom was but less obvious about it---and sing endless hymns to Father.

Well, possibly Azrael, if she ever got up to things when not ferrying dead souls about. She was a quiet one on some subjects, but he could guess after six thousand more years, she’d at least been curious about humans (the live kind) as well.

But no, ever since he and Eve had mutually tempted each other in the Garden, Lucifer had loved every type of earthly delight he could get his hands on. The top of which, of course, was sex. In every position and with every combination and permutation of lover (often more than one at a time for what was Celestial stamina truly for if not that) that one could imagine. He’d had millennia to perfect it.

And yet, since his return from Hell, since literal _centuries_, at least to him, spent thinking of Chloe, of desiring and of imagining her as one of his few distractions from the endless grey landscape and the ash that choked him, he had been the one taking things slow. Perhaps even glacially as a pace, if he were being honest with himself, and he tried to be. At least, his inner doubts were more than happy to tell him the true score when he stayed up late into the night with everything tossing and turning in his mind.

Yet, even after almost nine months back on earth and after finding footing yet again despite the “claws incident,” the Detective had been so incredibly patient with him. It had taken time. First, to reassure her that no matter how badly things grew, he’d keep communication open and wouldn’t run to Vegas or Europe or Hell. Alright, perhaps not Hell, but, honestly, if he ever truly injured her, he might exile himself there anyway.

It was where the worst monsters belonged, wasn’t it?

Oh, Remiel would have loved that. Dominion over her least favorite brother.

But they’d built trust back (it was the constant back-and-forth they always seemed like they had to do), and then he’d returned to consulting. Slowly at first, and he was still leery of using his ability to elicit desires more than he had to. Although, his power hadn’t yet reached beyond the interrogation room. So, that was something. Then, especially with the summer months and Beatrice away at space camp, they’d had more opportunity for other things.

Dear Dad, would Amenadiel and even Azrael both mock him as he forewent something deep and heated, some orgy or other offer, for a chance to snog on the couch with the Detective for hours as if they were teenagers. As if he were mortal and inexperienced, and it was his first time for anything. Although, then again, his sister was (now that he saw her again) quite clearly cheerleading his relationship with the Detective as much as Miss Lopez was. Amenadiel, for his part, had always been a sappy romantic, though, perhaps, there was something to his long ago theory that the dear Doctor was _something other_ because only someone with divinely inspired patience could have put up with the lot of them.

So, maybe it would have been worse. If his siblings knew how chaste and patient and, yes, scared he was being, they’d have “ooh’ed” over him like he was in a Disney movie.

He was the Devil. He was so very much more than PG-13 rated. After all, hadn’t Caligula and Catherine the Great, among others, learned from him?

But it was…the last time, the only reason they hadn’t---to borrow an Americanism---hit a homerun at the Detective’s place was because Ella had texted them when an especially grisly and time sensitive case had dropped around two a.m. Duty called and all that.

Yet that case had been put to bed almost a week ago, and their lazy, almost adolescent summer would be ending soon. Beatrice would be back from Huntsville, and life would get more hectic again. Not that they didn’t always have the penthouse to escape to. Honestly, with the size of his bed and its expensive mattress and high thread count silk sheets, it was preferable. Definitely why he’d chosen the place to finally take the plunge (and yes, he was whipped, and yes, Amenadiel would have encouraged him like the wide-eyed, naïve git he was about romance and everything in between).

It was why he’d asked her over.

Why he’d set out far too many candles, even at his bedside, though the flickering light and vague scent of cinnamon from most of the candles were worth it. Why he’d set the music on his stereo to nineties ballads and slow jams (currently something from Joan Osborne was warbling over his system), and why he’d given the Detective the task of picking out what she’d like for dinner.

She’d opted for carry out from the local Chinese place. He wasn’t sure that lo mein and fortune cookies were the height of romance, but then again, he was 0 for 2 when it came for planning food for her. The less said about either the expensive and (he could admit now) idiotic dinner to outdo Cain, the better. And Dear Dad, even less thought should be spared over the grilled cheese sandwiches.

Not that he’d ever been one to partake in oil-based cheese food products, but the fall out from that particular dinner made him want to incinerate the dairy section at most grocery stores when he glanced at the packaging just on principle.

Not that he would.

Probably.

When the Detective entered, he was moderately surprised to see her in a sundress. Nothing fancy but their lazy summer had been spent mostly with her in shorts and comfortable cotton shirts. The dress she wore fell only tantalizingly as far as mid-thigh and was a bright, sunny yellow. It was sweet and made him think of her as pure, which since he knew the urchin personally and since the Detective was a woman now into her forties, was a misleading impression. Yet, she was assuredly pure next to him.

He’d had every experience.

Almost.

And maybe that was why he’d been so nervous, so willing to put _it _all off. After all, he’d been in lust, and orgied, and partied, and fallen into the arms of many men and women often while intoxicated. A few times, he’d even fancied some of them. Will and Oscar as well as good old Mary Shelley came to mind. He’d always had a thing for wordsmiths. But they’d all been passing fancies.

Eve…she’d been an infatuation and a freedom once, and then a terrible mistake that had hurt them both deeply. He was glad she had Mazikeen as much as he was relieved to be on good (so he hoped) footing with the Detective.

But he’d never loved anyone the way he’d loved Chloe. He knew what it was to have sex---he had helped inspire the Kama Sutra of course---but he knew almost nothing of what it was to make love. He’d been too rejected too often in his long, wicked life to know what love even felt like.

Between the urchin’s familial affection and still somewhat suffocating hugs and the long make out sessions rife with stolen kisses from his Detective, however, he was finally beginning to at least hope he knew what acceptance was like.

And yet, even now, she hadn’t seen _all of him_, and he intended to keep it that way. The flare-ups were less after all and the memories---the nightmares---fading. Slowly but surely.

Hell was behind them both.

It had to be.

He stood up and smiled, gesturing to the sofa. “I ordered all you asked, but I draw the line at the wine you listed. You’ll have to do with the wine from my cellar. I’d rather drink water than swill.”

“Eleven-dollar wine is fine for mere mortals,” she said, winking at him, before she settled herself on the sofa. Her skirt rode even further up her thigh, and he had never had so little interest in eating food in his entire existence. “Are you serving me something French, unpronounceable and older than I am?”

“It’s actually from Italy,” he replied, not admitting it was assuredly older than the Detective. What was the point if you couldn’t get an exclusive vintage anyway?

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll get you to settle for not the best of everything yet.”

He slunk toward the sofa and leaned over her, getting close enough to whisper in her ear. “I have never settled, Detective. I certainly haven’t when it comes to you, so why would I with anything I use to slake my thirst---any type of thirst.” Lucifer lowered his voice a bit, and let his affected lilt do the seduction work for him. “Do you truly desire dinner, Detective? Or is there something else you’d much rather do?”

She blushed up at him, flushes of red coloring her cheeks and setting off the beauty mark on her right side even more than usual. “Well, you did go to the trouble of ordering it and---”

After years of dancing around everything, he was finally so very tired of waiting. She was perfect tonight, as beautiful as she’d ever been and as lovely as he’d ever dreamed of her being in far too many unfulfilled bits of slumber. So many things he would wish had been true in the light of day. For her, it had been long enough and for him, impossibly too long to wait.

The food could get sodding cold. Whoever would care?

Lucifer leaned even closer and captured her lips with his own. “Again, Detective, i dinner what you truly desire?”

When he pulled back, she was staring at him, her eyes half-lidded and lips fuller from the intensity of their kissing. “You know that stuff doesn’t work on me.”

“No, but I am honestly asking. I’m always happy to do as you ask, but suddenly, I admit, my appetite has left me.”

She swallowed and he just barely restrained himself from kissing his way down her neck. “I think…I’d like to take it to your bedroom.”

“A truly good answer, Detective.” He grinned back at her, leveling the power of his own mischievous smile at her.

It often earned him her indulgence and, granted, typically in the form of put-upon sighs and eyerolls. However, now she seemed to be smiling genuinely and hungrily back at him, even as he scooped her into his arms to carry her bridal style up what the urchin had so pithily (and incorrectly) dubbed his “princess steps.”

Reluctantly, he set her on her feet. He’d have preferred to set her on the bed, but she was wearing far too many clothes---at this point _any_ was too much---and he desperately wanted to see all of her. He offered her the same in turn, sliding off his Oxford shirt and getting off his belt before she shook her head.

“You don’t have to rush,” the Detective said, even as she maneuvered the dress off her shoulders. He had to tamp down a literal growl when he spied the thin scraps of ivory lace the Detective had worn underneath. She’d been as ready as he was. Sliding down onto the sheets, she positioned herself so that her hair fanned out around her, a bit like a halo of gold but far better than anything he’d _ever_ glimpsed in the Silver City. “I like some of the teasing.”

He quirked his head at her. “I think there’s been far too much bloody much of that. Besides, you’ve seen everything more than once.”

“So have people running a bodega and a homeless witness. Perhaps discretion was never your best thing, Lucifer.”  


He unbuttoned his trousers and slid them off in one smooth motion. Per usual, there was nothing underneath that. Ruined the line of his slacks if he did, and, of course, he was a fan of freedom in all things. It did not escape his notice how the Detective’s breathing became more shallow, and her pupils went wide under the flickering candle light.

“Discretion is highly overrated, Chloe. It’s antithetical to me.” Lucifer punctuated his statement by crawling up the bed and coming to rest over top of her. Long fingers trailed over the thin material of her bra. “Would you mind terribly if I just yanked this off?”

“Do you know what _Victoria’s Secret_ charges for this?”  


He chuckled warmly. There were so many gulfs between them: miracle and Devil, mortal and immortal, and yet sometimes the common sense, no frills side to John Decker’s daughter (clearly Penelope was as fond of extravagance as he was) and his own playboy indulgence would always be a bizarre scale to balance. Honestly, he’d buy out a whole store’s worth of the model she was sporting for just the very pleasure of tearing it off her like a parcel on a holiday morning (if he observed those).

“Then, I shall go slower, at least spare your knickers and the like, Detective.” He wasn’t thinking even as he moved a bit to get better leverage. His arm grazed against one of the myriad of candles dribbling wax and the heat of it did burn, not badly. However, the sensation was too familiar.

And not in a good way.

Suddenly, Lucifer wasn’t in the penthouse any longer. At least, he couldn’t focus on the sight of the startled Detective before him, squirming out from under him to assess his forearm. No, the wax was hot, must have scorched him a bit and temporarily marred his skin. But it wasn’t about pain.

Fire couldn’t cause the Devil lingering torment; not now. But he remembered.

Dear Dad did he remember the moment he Fell, the splash into a lake of fire so deep and vast that he couldn’t escape it, where swimming for years and years had felt like a pipe dream and the flames then had ravaged his skin, torn through him until he could no longer feel the fire at all. Until being the Lightbringer was now a debasement, now meant that fire was his to command too, because it had burned him for eons longer than it ever had any Celestial or demon, longer than it ever would for even a damned mortal soul.

He stumbled out of bed and even as he gasped for breath, even as he fell to his knees, Lucifer felt _them_. Felt the way the bones hidden just under his shoulder blades twisted and pushed against his skin. Before he could gather his senses or concentrate well enough to keep _them_ at bay, two massive wings erupted from his back. It didn’t hurt, even with these ones (them slipping out never actually hurt) but mentally, their appearance was wrecking him.

After all---and he’d expected no less---he hadn’t heard the fluttering of feathers when they’d unfurled. Only a leathery noise, like a sail being unwrapped on the wind or a tarp caught in the breeze.

He stilled and closed his eyes. Lucifer forced himself to take in deep breaths until he wasn’t back in the lake of fire any longer, until he could ignore the memories of burning that one, simple candle had triggered. But he had no interest in opening them again, even if he were focused back on the here and now, on the penthouse with the Detective. Swallowing hard, he tried to force the awful parody of wings on his back away, but it was no use.

They were harder to negotiate with than even the feathered annoyances, and when they came out, like with the masquerade party gone awry so long ago, it sometimes took hours before he could send them away. Back in Hell, they’d been an advantage. Everything monstrous had been amongst the demons. The worst of the lot to answer to and all that.

Now, he didn’t want to see the Detective’s reaction.

She’d seen them twice before, but Lucifer had worked so very hard to try and keep the Devilish from her. After all, what was more Infernal than the large, leathery, bat-like monstrosities erupting from his shoulders?

“I…I apologize,” he said, his voice hoarse and thready but at least his own.

There was the soft sound of her feet padding across the expanse of the bedroom, but he still refused to open his eyes. What he did not expect next, was the soft caress of her hands against the back of _them_, of the things pretending to be wings.

He hadn’t been…even in Hell before he’d ever come to Los Angeles…no one had helped him preen the feathered ones. He’d bore the pain and annoyance of the ash in his primaries alone. In heaven, Azrael and he had preened each other most often, during quiet moments in the clouds. He’d honestly forgotten how nice it could feel to have wings touched at all. But he hadn’t expected the bat-like ones to be sensitive, not with the claws at every finger and the massive spikes that spread from both wrist joints. And yet, the skin there was so sensitive, so untouched by the scars that wracked the rest of his Devil side.

Lucifer shuddered and let out a low moan as the Detective…as Chloe continued stroking both wings slowly.

“You don’t have to do that.”

He was surprised even further when she wrapped her arms around his back, well as best she could, and drew him close to her chest. Well, bully for small things. At least he hadn’t grown any spines yet, and, in that moment, he had rarely hated his Father more.

Fucking self-actualization.

“I do, though. Lucifer, it’s okay. Open your eyes.”

He sighed and complied, but Lucifer did not stand yet. It was comfortable somehow like this and he didn’t want to make it harder for her to caress him. Even if she shouldn’t be touching such abominations at all. Even if she were merely normal, she shouldn’t, but a miracle---a living, breathing act of divinity---shouldn’t be sullied by the likes of him.

Before him, he could see the rumpled bed and the fallen candles. One had burned his carpet a bit, but clearly the Detective had been resourceful enough to put it out. So much for grand gestures. Next time, he’d stick to twinkle lights at best. Assuming there was a next time.

“You shouldn’t have to touch me when I’m like this,” he replied.

She hugged him tighter and to his utter shock, placed soft lips against his left wing. It felt amazing, and he couldn’t help but shiver and move his wing just a bit with her ministrations. “I want to.”

The Detective kissed him once more before dropping her arms and sitting at the foot of his bed. He took that cue to stand but didn’t get closer, only pulled his wings as tightly to his back as he could, even if he couldn’t make them disappear completely.

Would that he could.

Would that he could will himself to leave either but like this he couldn’t run, and he’d promised the Detective after the scratching incident that he wouldn’t anyway.

“But you can’t want that,” he said, his voice low and mournful, slowly starting to echo the tones it had in Hell.

_Sodding perfect_.

“Why?”

“Because no one has ever really wanted me. I…the humans before didn’t know, and the Lilim down below wanted to jockey for position with their King.” He flared out his wings despite himself and growled back at her. “You can’t be serious.”

She considered him, blue eyes wide and earnest. “I very much am, though. I have wanted you for a very long time, since that kiss on the beach, since I realized everything with Marcus, ugh, was really a reaction to how I felt about you, and when I was sick to death of your sexcapade stories with Eve.”

“Perhaps not my most shining moment.”

She laughed, and he loved how the peels of her laughter reminded him of bells chiming. She could be so very serious, but also cheeky when she wanted to…his detective. “No, and I have waited and wanted and imagined so much between us when you had to leave. And I don’t blame you for that at all. I’m grateful because it was horrible, but it wasn’t wrong. Dromos or some other demon would have kept coming. There would have been so many more murders or more danger for Charlie. God…um, you know what I mean; it wouldn’t have been hard for them to figure out that Trixie and I mean so much to you. I couldn’t bear the idea of some monster like that taking her, hurting her to get to you.”

“Only bear the thought of a monster like me, Detective?”

She shook her head and clenched her jaw a bit before she spoke. “No, I never said that. I freaked out at first, and Kinley played on that. Then, I sorted out how I felt but you were gone, and, honestly, I had three years to think more. And, of course, it’s easy to love the angel with the white wings.”

“I’m not rightly fond of those either, to be honest.” He flexed his shoulders and his bat ones flared again behind him. “Though they’re a sight bit better than these.”

“And it’s somewhat difficult to love the consultant with no sense of decorum or rules and a million bad puns.”

“Everyone else but Daniel at the precinct adores me.”

“Uh-huh. And, honestly, I’m not super fond of the orgy host side.”

“I suppose not.”

“But I decided while you were gone and while I hoped that you’d figure a way to come back…just every night I’d fall asleep thinking about it.”

“You minx!” he said, trying for levity despite everything.

“No, not that.” Although she blushed. “Well, okay, sometimes that. But I realized early on that missing you was truly about missing _all_ of you---angel and Devil and the club owner in between. I mean, you saved my life in the Mayan and that was all the Devil side doing it. I can’t…I love all of you, Lucifer.” She stood up again and wrapped her arms around his waist, and despite logic or maybe just instinctually, he wrapped the blasted eyesores around both of them, as if cocooning them would help. “I know you can’t…you’re not there yet at all to accept yourself. I can’t understand all of that, but I can just be here and tell you I love you, and whatever you need is okay.”

He shuddered under her embrace and her honesty. Reluctantly, he lifted his head and wasn’t surprised that he saw the world through a reddish film. The Detective eyed him but did not look away, not like with the masquerade or after everything exploded with Kinley.

“I have not lied to you, but I have skated around the truth for the better part of a year.” He held her tighter in case this was the last time he ever could. “You asked me to tell you about being back in Hell, and I didn’t wish to. I still don’t, but I don’t think I can run from it any longer.” He let out a rueful laugh as his wings shivered around them. “It’s coming up quite literally whether I ignore it or not.”

She nodded. “I’ve been a homicide detective in a huge city for over ten years. You think for some reason I’m on a pedestal, at least kind of, or innocent, Lucifer, but I’ve seen a lot.”

“You have not seen what I’ve done, nor have you ever felt it. I do not murder humans, not after Cain, and I never would. But I had to make an example of Dromos and Squee and the horde they unleashed. I had to flay skin, burn flesh, and pull out nerves one by bloody one. Mazikeen _learned_ from me, not the other way around. I kept Dromos alive for the better part of a decade because he deserved my attention first. Demons are heartier than mortals anyway, and the rest needed to know, needed to understand they could not defy me without consequences.”

She swallowed hard but didn’t look away even then, didn’t flinch. Perhaps she’d grown more in the time they’d had apart than he’d realized. Lucifer wasn’t sure that was a good thing or not. “I figured. There wasn’t going to be any other way. Maze mentioned it was likely since demons aren’t big on listening any other way and…wait a decade?”

He nodded and wanted so badly to kiss her just in case she ordered him away, but he didn’t have the nerve to try. Not now. “I wondered while I was gone if Amenadiel would explain this, but time moves differently across planes. It’s slower in the Silver City and in Hell. Thirty seconds below feels to a human soul like thirty years.”

“Shit,” she said, inhaling sharply. “That explains so much. Malcolm acted like he’d been in Hell for so long when he’d only flatlined according to his wife about a minute.”

“Yes, but he felt as if he were there---he basically was---for far longer.”

“You were gone three years so if a second feels like a year…”

He shook his head and brought a finger to her lips. “Do _not_ do the math. I lost count eventually of the time. Of so many things.” Honestly, for the first collection of centuries, Lucifer lost track of even his preferred form because the horde had to pay and no one was going to cower before a former angel’s visage, not the same way as it would before the Devil incarnate. “But I never forgot you or how badly I wanted to be home. Eventually, I reached out via Azrael to the few receptive angels she could find, and we figured a Celestial exchange of sorts. But no matter what I did---and it was so many things, and sometimes I did visit human sinners once the demons had quelled, I won’t deny that---I did not forget you.” He sighed and finally pulled his wings back and stepped away from her embrace. “Even if I am not worthy of you.”

She was crying then, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I mean that had to be _thousands _of years.”

He did not correct her math. It had been longer, at least to him. But that was supposed to be over now, and this was the good part. Why couldn’t it just be over?

“It needed to be done, and I couldn’t leave an infant to that fate. What would Dromos and his ilk have done to Charlie? What could they have brainwashed and raised him to be? It was unacceptable. Besides, I’ve ruled Hell for eons. I…there had always been longer between my holidays on earth than a measly three years your time. It was as it was.”

“But you had something to go back to this time, something you wanted.”

“Yes,” he said, reaching out and stroking her cheek. “I did.”

“You still do.”  


“But I don’t deserve you.”

“It isn’t about deserving me. I betrayed you and almost poisoned you.”

“I should have shown you who I was earlier. It came out at the worst possible time because I’d been putting it off.”

She shook her head. “You could still forgive me and love me, and I didn’t deserve it. You might feel like whatever you did in Hell, that no matter how bad it got, you didn’t deserve me. But it’s not about that.”

“Then what is it about!” he demanded, his voice a growl and his hands bawled into fists at his side. “I spent centuries torturing my underlings, setting heads on pikes and tearing out spines. I still wanted _more_ when they were calm and went back to Hell loops because, yes, I do delegate and especially to the Lilim, but I still do my share. You _deserve_ better than a torturer. Than the Beast of Revelation.”

Her eyes seemed to flash with determination then. “Really? Then, tell me who’s better? Who is a better option than the man who saved Trixie’s life twice? Than the uncle who’d literally do anything for his family even if he claims not to like children?”

“I don’t. They really are terrible burdens, not worth the tax write-offs, I’m sure.”

She sidled up to him and stroked a hand over his chest, over where years ago she’d left a line of blood from an ax. “Who could I want more than the person who loves me more than anything, and I _know_ somehow went to Hell and back to save me from being poisoned to death? How could there be someone better than you?”

“So many people,” he admitted.

“No, there’s not. Not for me---”

“But I’m not---”

She put a finger to his lips, stilling him. “Lucifer, if I wanted a normal, human guy…If I wanted someone who wasn’t the freaking Devil, I had three years to move on. I had time this year to call it quits when you were pulling away. I don’t want that. I want whatever time we have left---and I know it won’t ever be enough for you, just a blip---but I want that to count. So, yeah, maybe I should have higher standards. Or maybe once I’d have been a picket fence girl---not that trying it with Dan worked out exactly---but I’m _not_ now. You think you don’t deserve anything, but I’m giving it to you freely because, damn it, I love you!”

He grinned at that. “Did you just get angry at and threaten the Devil over how much you love him?”

“_You_, you idiot. I love you and yeah, I did,” she said, leaning up and kissing him.

Lucifer stilled at first, not sure how she could stand it. Stand _him_, but he’d told her the worst of it, and she was still here. Maybe it was truly real this time, and even if she had doubts somewhere deep down, after over six years or so (and just in earth time) of missed connections and longing, he could no longer fight it.

Yes, Chloe Decker might be okay somehow, miraculously, with him being the Devil, but it would take Lucifer longer than that to accept himself. But in her arms and as her tongue twisted skillfully over his own, that was okay for now.

His wings came forward again, sodding things, and curled up around both of them, cocooning them yet again away from the rest of the world. Lucifer tried to pull away, but she clung to his shoulders.

“Don’t. It’s fine. Perfect even.”

“You have a secret fetish for bats, Detective?”

“No, I just care about you, and if they’re a part of you…I maybe tonight is so not the night for a ton more because you’re upset and worked up.”

He sighed, “Perhaps I have killed the mood, yes.”

She kissed his cheek, “But don’t leave.”

“Wherever would I go?”

“Point, but just…lie down with me. Rest, Lucifer, please.”

He wanted to do anything else because she should be near _them_, shouldn’t have to suffer their touch, but he also had never been able to deny her anything. After she slid under the covers, he slipped next to her, one wing falling off the bed and the other wrapped tightly around both of them. And, no matter how much he expected differently, she didn’t flinch, just cuddled contentedly up next to him as he spooned her closely.

Lucifer fell asleep to the soothing, deep breaths of his detective and, for the first time in what felt like forever, found a deep and restful sleep.

And a peace between them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glad to be part of The Deckerstar Network Exchange. It was fun for Halloween, everyone should check out ** all ** the stories in the collection!


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